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CHARLOTTE  BRONTE 

GEORGE  ELIOT 

JANE  AUSTEN 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE 

GEORGE   ELIOT 

JANE  AUSTEN 

STUDIES    IN    THEIR   WORKS 


BY 

HENRY    H.  IbONNELL 


y^l 


LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND    CO. 

91  AND  93  FIFTH  AVE.,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON  AND  BOMBAY 

1902 


Copyright,  igo2 
By  Henry  H.  Bonnell 


All  rights  rmrvid 


UNIVERSITY   PRESS   ■     JOHN   W1150N 
AND      SON    •     CAMBRIDGE,     U.  S.  A. 


To 
E.  C.  B. 


CONTENTS 

I.   CHARLOTTE    BRONTE.  page 

(a)  Her  Realism 3 

(^)  Her  Attitude  towards  Nature  53 

(f)  Her  Passion 81 

II.   GEORGE   ELIOT. 

(a)  Her  Religion  and  Philosophy  131 

(Ji)  Her  Art 199 

(f)  Her  Sympathy  :    Further   Con- 
sidered    257 

III.  JANE   AUSTEN. 

(a)  Her  Place     . 325 

(Jf)  Her  Wonderful  Charm     .     .     .  380 


CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

A    STUDT    OF    PASSION 


CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

A     STUDY     OF     PASSION 

A.  — HER   REALISM 
I 

"There  are  three  principal  influences,"  says  the 
biographer  of  Renan,  "  which  go  to  shape  human 
character:  that  of  heredity,  that  of  locality,  and  that 
of  every-day association."  And  the  character  maybe 
studied  with  approximations  to  truth  only  after  all  pos- 
sible evidence  relating  to  such  influences  is  in  hand. 
If  time  be  the  corrector  and  adjuster,  any  approach  to 
finality  in  criticism  may  be  despaired  of  until  the  image 
shall  have  passed  into  a  more  or  less  fixed  atmo- 
sphere, —  into  an  atmosphere  which  has  ceased  to 
pulsate  with  the  passions  and  the  prejudices,  the 
friendships  and  the  hatreds  of  the  present  hour. 

As  a  pathetic  illustration  of  this  essential  inability 
to  seize  with  a  full  sense  of  ownership  the  finished 
idea  of  a  life  whose  activities  have  but  just  ceased,  the 
memorial  paper  of  Mr.  Henry  James  upon  Lowell  is 
worthy  of  note.  "  It  is  his  [the  critic's]  function," 
says  Mr.  James,  "  to  speak  with  assurance  when  once 
his  impression  has  become  final ;  and  it  is  in  noting 
this  circumstance  that  I  perceive  how  slenderly 
prompted  I  am  to  deliver  myself  on  such  an  occa- 
sion as  a  critic.     It  is  not  that  due  conviction  is  ab- 


4  Charlotte  Bronte 

sent ;  it  is  only  that  the  function  is  a  cold  one.  It  is 
not  that  the  final  impression  is  dim ;  it  is  only  that  it 
is  made  on  a  softer  part  of  the  spirit  than  the  critical 
sense.  The  process  is  more  mystical,  the  deposited 
image  is  insistently  personal,  the  generalizing  principle 
is  that  of  loyalty." 

But  if  the  poet  had  been  an  offender  in  the  eyes  of 
the  critic,  and  if  the  critic  had  lived  in  a  less  acutely 
fair-minded  age  than  the  present;  if  instead  of  having 
the  latter-day  Mr.  James  as  his  friendly  reviewer,  the 
poet  had  died  far  enough  back  in  the  century  to  have 
fallen  under  the  finger  of  Gifford,  this  difficulty  of 
correct  judgment  would  have  been  all  the  more  urgent. 
The  vast  majority  of  men  and  women  seem  to  be  but 
the  net  product  of  ancestry  and  environment ;  and  an 
original  man  used  to  be  regarded  with  peculiar  sus- 
picion as  one  whose  purpose  was  not  explained  by  his 
environment,  and  whose  lack  of  ancestry  had  to  be 
accounted  for  by  a  kind  of  spontaneous  generation  or 
special  creation,  which,  like  all  biological  departures, 
is  a  little  disquieting.  Indeed,  this  nervous  attitude 
is  even  yet  a  common  one. 

We  are  fond  of  talking  about  the  Republic  of  Let- 
ters, and  the  capitals  have  a  fine  rhetorical  look  on  the 
printed  page.  But  too  many  of  those  immortals  who 
have  finally  won  a  free  citizenship  there  would  seem 
to  have  had  their  fortunes  at  first  cast  among  the 
numbing  rigors  of  an  oligarchy, — their  radicalism 
grouped  for  the  while  into  a  forlorn  third  party,  such 
was  that  questioning  challenge  of  all  new  modes  of 
thought  and  action  which  was  esteemed  to  be  a 
safeguard  of  our  conservation. 

And  yet  in  course  of  time  the  true  values  come  to 
the  surface.     If  there  is  enough  vital   excellence  in 


Her  Realism  5 

a  man's  work  to  buoy  up  what  is  not  vital  in  it,  that 
work  will  be  found  afloat  in  after  generations.  The 
best  books  are  not  the  rare  books.  Every  wise  writer 
is,  sooner  or  later,  a  read  writer.  However  slow  the 
critics  may  be  in  differentiating  the  vitalities  from  the 
non-vitalities,  the  life  in  them  is  at  last  discovered, 
somehow  as  tears  are  discovered  in  the  presence  of 
grief,  or  a  fever  in  the  blood  at  a  tale  of  wrong. 

It  is  not  so  very  surprising,  then,  that  the  reception 
of  *  Jane  Eyre  '  in  certain  critical  quarters  was  a  glar- 
ingly mistaken  one,  and  that  its  appreciation  was 
challenged  step  by  step  with  refusals  to  accept  its 
message  because  of  the  misunderstandings  of  its 
spiritual  simplicity.  Yet  in  six  months'  time  the  novel 
was  in  its  third  edition.^  Sales  are  not  the  finest  test, 
of  course,  for  '  Queechy,'  and  '  An  Original  Belle ' 
are  still  sold.  But  it  is  not  only  the  commonplace 
which  is  popular :  there  is  another  kind  of  popularity 
which  is  but  the  acknowledgment  that  a  great  chord 
has  been  struck  true ;  and  this  instinctive  recognition 
of  a  pure,  sane  genius  lasts  in  an  abiding  personal 
interest  unattached  to  the  other  class  of  "popular** 
writers.  How  many  who  read,  last  year,  —  well,  any 
of  the  "  best-selling  books  "  of  that  season,  can  tell 
even  the  name  of  its  author?  On  the  other  hand,  who 
does  not  know  that  Keats  lies  buried  in  Rome;  and 
what  literary  sojourner  in  the  Eternal  City  does  not 
linger  for  awhile  in  that  old  cemetery  near  the  pyramid 
of  Gains  Cestius?     Finally,  is  there  any  popular  living 

^  '  The  Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte,'  by  Mrs.  Gaskell,  with  an  Intro- 
duction and  Notes  by  Clement  K.  Shorter.  New  York  and  London, 
Harper  &  Bros.,  1900,  p.  363,  note.  All  references  to  Mrs.  Gaskell's 
work  in  this  study  are  made  from  this,  the  latest  and  most  authorita- 
tive edition  of  her  biography. 


6  Charlotte  Bronte 

writer  to  whose  grave,  forty  years  after  his  death,  will 
flock  in  one  year,  as  to  a  shrine,  ten  thousand  pil- 
grims? That  was  the  number  which  visited  the 
Bronte  Museum  at  Haworth  in  1895.^ 


II 

There  were  popular  writers  in  Miss  Bronte's  day,  too, 
who  are  known  now  only  to  students  of  literature. 
Richardson  and  Fielding  had,  each  in  his  own  way, 
marked  a  path  for  Realism  to  follow,  but  it  was  not 
heeded.  The  love  of  the  marvellous,  formerly  fostered 
by  the  drama,  and  checked  for  awhile  by  Goldsmith, 
and  in  a  minor  way  by  such  books  as  '  Evelina '  and 
'  Cecilia '  (for  artificial  as  her  style  was,  and  highly 
improbable  as  were  some  of  her  incidents,  Miss 
Burney's  pictures  were  in  general  accord  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  realism),  found  full  vent  again  in  the  '  Myste- 
ries of  Udolpho,'  and  in  the  lucubrations  of  '  Monk ' 
Lewis  and  '  Anastasius '  Hope.  While  Miss  Bronte 
had,  in  her  formative  period,  only  such  knowledge  of 
literature  as  the  parsonage  afforded,  and  while  beyond 
certain  standard  poets  and  historians  it  did  not  afford 
much ;  ^  while  her  reading  was  necessarily  desultory, 

1  'Charlotte  Bronte  and  Her  Circle,'  by  Clement  K.  Shorter, 
London :  New  York,  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1896.    p.  23. 

2  We  know  from  '  Shirley  '  what  the  Bronte  library  consisted  of  in 
part :  "mad  Methodist  magazines,  full  of  miracles  and  apparitions,  and 
preternatural  warnings,  ominous  dreams  and  frenzied  fanaticisms ; "  all 
of  which  came  from  the  maternal  forbears  in  Cornwall.  It  was  not 
until  the  pleasant  relations  with  her  publishers  were  established  that 
she  was  put  in  command  of  a  full  supply  of  literature ;  and  the  flood 
that  set  in  then  is  an  index  to  the  previous  drouth.  In  the  earlier 
days  there  was  no  such  assistance,  and  no  time  for  extended  reading 
even  if  the  means  had  been  present. 


Her  Realism  7 

as  the  time  for  it  had  to  be  snatched  from  household 
drudgery,  needlework,  and  the  mistaken  art-practis- 
ing, and  the  nearest  circulating  library  could  be 
reached  only  by  a  stiff  four-mile  walk  over  the  moors 
to  Keighley  (in  1848  we  find  her  complaining  that  no 
circulating  library  is  accessible),  she  had  doubtless 
dipped  into  the  romance  writers  enough  to  appreciate 
their  general  faults,  and  to  criticise  the  same  in  her 
preface  to  '  The  Professor.' 

The  story-tellers  whose  fame  was  noisiest  in  Miss 
Bronte's  early  days  might  be  divided  into  two  classes, 
the  ultra-romantic  and  the  tiresomely  didactic.  An 
encyclopedic  list  of  these  would  be  interesting  as 
showing  how  like  a  breeze  from  a  new  sphere  '  Jane 
Eyre'  and  'Vanity  Fair*  scattered  their  unrealities 
and  impossibilities.  They  are  for  the  most  part  for- 
gotten, and  only  by  forcibly  carrying  the  attention 
back  to  them  can  we  rightly  understand  what  the 
originality  of  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Thackeray  meant 
in  1847. 

As  good  specimens  as  any  of  the  first  class  are 
Jane  Porter,  whose  *  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw  '  gained 
such  honors  (but  who  reads  it  now?)  ;  the  Lee  sis- 
ters, from  one  of  the  '  Canterbury  Tales '  of  whom 
Byron  "borrowed"  his  'Werner,'  —  if,  indeed,  'Wer- 
ner '  was  written  by  Byron,  and  not  by  the  Duchess 
of  Devonshire,  as  the  Hon.  Frederick  Levison-Gower 
now  claims ;  ^  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  of  lurid  memory ;  *  Fatal 
Revenge '  Maturin ;  the  gratefully  recalled  G.  P.  R. 
James,  with  his  solitary  horseman,  his  pale  moonlight, 
and  his  lonely  inn ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  much-to- 
answer-for  Ainsworth,  with  his  Jack  Sheppards  and 
Dick  Turpins. 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  August,  1899. 


8  Charlotte  Bronte 

In  the  second  division  repose,  among  others,  Mrs. 
Opie ;  Anna  Maria  Porter,  the  child  friend  of  Scott ; 
Hannah  More;  Maria  Edgeworth,  and  Miss  Landon ; 
and  that  Mrs.  Sherwood  who  in  the  working  heyday 
of  her  Hfe  produced  ninety  books.^  It  is  significant 
that  the  typical  didacticists  are  women.  They  were 
forced  into  it,  positively,  by  an  honest  natural  femi- 
nine desire  to  save  fiction,  through  morality,  from  utter 
pruriency,  and  negatively,  by  a  lack  of  inspiration  to 
accomplish  the  reform  along  the  lines  of  the  highest 
art.  It  is  easy  enough  for  tcs  to  laugh  at  Miss  Edge- 
worth's  '  Moral  Tales;  '  we  ought  to  think  a  little,  in 
her  justification,  of  what  she  was  trying  to  escape  from.^ 

Other  novelists  still  famous  in  Miss  Bronte's  day  who 
may  not  be  classified  so  easily  were  :  William  Godwin, 
whose  writings  she  did  not  know,  as  she  asks  to  see 
them  in  1849;  ^  Henry  Mackenzie,  whose  voice  comes 
down  to  us  a  mixed  echo  of  Richardson  and  Sterne ; 
that  sprightly  woman,  Miss  Ferrier;  William  Carleton 
and  Gerald  Griffin,  two  Irish  realists  before  the  days  of 
realism;  the  excellent  Miss  Mitford;  and  the  ephem- 

^  Mrs.  Sherwood  is,  curiously  enough,  omitted  from  such  works  as 
the  '  Encyclopedia  Britannica  '  and  the  '  Library  of  the  World's  Best 
Literature.'  If  such  works  of  reference  are  intended  to  chronicle  only 
those  of  the  past  who  live  in  the  present,  her  name  would  certainly 
be  one  of  the  first  to  be  dropped  ;  but  the  author  of '  Roxobel '  —  still, 
admired  by  grandmothers  and  maiden  aunts  in  primitive  homes  — 
surely  deserves  mention  in  any  book  which  professes  to  be  not  only  a 
recorder  of  the  living  dead,  but  a  mausoleum  also  to  the  dead  dead. 

2  It  is  just  to  Miss  Edgeworth's  memory  to  say  that,  but  for  the 
didactic  interference  of  her  father,  the  popularity  of  her  works  would 
have  remained ;  and  that,  notwithstanding  this  interference,  such 
novels  as  '  Castle  Rackrent,'  '  Belinda,'  and  '  Patronage,'  have  a 
fixed  place  in  literary  history,  and  may  still  be  enjoyed  by  the 
judicious. 

8  Shorter,  p.  195. 


Her  Realism  9 

eral  but  fashionable  Mrs.  Gore.^  I  was  about  to 
put  Samuel  Warren  in  the  list,  but  Miss  Bronte  prob- 
ably read  '  Ten  Thousand  A  Year,'  as  it  came  from 
Blackwood's,  the  one  strictly  literary  periodical  taken 
in  at  the  parsonage  up  to  1832,  when  Fraser's  was 
subscribed  to  for  a  short  period. 

In  none  of  these  had  Charlotte  Bronte  any  lot  or 
share.2  Surely  the  remarkable  circumstance  of  her 
criticism  of  Miss  Austen  is,  not  that  it  differs  from 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  (and  nearly  everybody  else's,  too),  but 
because  of  its  revelation  that  she  had  never  seen  such 
a  book  as  *  Pride  and  Prejudice,'  which  had  then  been 
in  print  thirty-five  years.  We  are  fain  to  overlook  in 
Charlotte  Bronte  what  in  others  would  seem  a  slight 
upon  that  delightful  recorder  of  tittle-tattle  and  charm- 
ing precursor  of  Trollope.  The  reader  of  the  biog- 
raphy knows  that  she  was,  as  a  child,  uncommonly 

^  Among  the  "  curiosities  of  literature  "  which  I  occasionally  take 
down  from  a  dusty  top-shelf,  I  value  for  the  suggestions  it  invariably 
awakens  a  certain  sadly  faded  set  of  twelvemos,  in  the  doubtful  bind- 
ing of  the  early  '30's,  and  bearing  the  imprint  of  the  Messrs.  Harper. 
They  are  reprints  of  the  most  popular  of  such  of  the  above  as  had 
fallen  from  the  press  by  that  time  ;  and  the  accompanying  advertise- 
ment of  the  publishers,  long  since  turned  yellow,  mentions  these  pro- 
ductions as  "  fashionable,"  in  contradistinction  to  the  "  standard  "  work 
noted  on  the  opposite  leaf.  Fancy  the  impossibility  of  such  a  distinc- 
tion between  fiction  and  other  literature  to-day !  Yet  for  the  most 
part,  the  distinction  was  deserved  then.  Only  since  then  has  the  novel 
taken  on  its  more  serious  side,  assuming  to  itself  the  characteristics 
of  all  the  other  forms  of  literature  also. 

^  She  says,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Williams  :  "  The  plot  of  'Jane  Eyre' 
maybe  a  hackneyed  one.  Mr.  Thackeray  remarks  that  it  is  familiar 
to  him.  But  having  read  comparatively  few  novels,  I  never  chanced 
to  meet  with  it,  and  I  thought  it  original.  .  .  .  The  Weekly  Chronicle 
seems  inclined  to  identify  me  with  Mrs.  Marsh.  I  never  had  the 
pleasure  of  perusing  a  line  of  Mrs.  Marsh's  in  my  life."  —  Shorter, 
p.  404. 


lo  Charlotte  Bronte 

studious,  and  that  her  schoolmates  were  wont  to  look 
up  to  her  as  a  prodigy  of  learning.  It  is  safe  to  surmise 
that  of  the  books  she  recommends  to  Ellen  Nussey 
in  her  letter  of  July  4,  1834,^  she  had  read  a  goodly 
number,  if  not  all,  herself;  and  the  list  is  valuable  as 
showing  that,  however  high  the  omissions,  there  were 
still  higher  inclusions.  But  that  she  was  not  a  trained 
student  is  evident.  Outside  of  Blackwood' s  she  had 
but  little  acquaintance  with  contemporary  writers. 
The  favorite  heroes  of  the  youthful  '  Magazine '  were, 
almost  without  exception,  the  famous  politicians  of  the 
day,  —  were  not  literary  heroes.  The  natural  periods 
or  turning-points  of  literary  history  were  not  known 
to  her ;  and  she  was  therefore  without  any  thorough 
understanding  of  their  reciprocal  relations  and  their 
influence  upon  subsequent  writing.  Her  reference 
to  Mr.  Atkinson's  book  as  "  the  first  exposition  of 
avowed  atheism  and  materialism  "  she  had  ever  read,^ 
shows  she  had  no  acquaintance  with  the  free  thought 
of  the  preceding  century;  and  if  any  speculative 
writing  had  come  in  her  way  (which  the  environment 
forbids  us  to  suppose),  it  is  clear  from  the  tone  of  her 
letters  pertaining  to  this  period  that  it  would  have 
been  considered  unsafe  for  a  young  woman's  perusal. 
Whether  consciously  or  unconsciously,  and  without 
necessarily  affecting  his  originality,  nearly  every  writer 
is  influenced  by  some  predecessor.  Bulwer  traces  to 
Godwin,  Dumas  to  Scott.  The  literary  father  of 
Dickens  is  Goldsmith,  and  his  uncles  are  Smollett 
and  Sterne ;  while  Smollett,  for  his  part,  is  a  disciple 
of  Lesage,  and  Sterne  is  the  English  Rabelais.  Much 
as  Thackeray  differs  from  Fielding,  if  it  had  not  been 

*  Gaskell,  p.  134.  "  Gaskell,  p.  517. 


Her  Realism  1 1 

for  Fielding,  he  would  have  differed  more.  And 
Fielding's  prototype,  on  his  own  confession,  was 
Cervantes.  But  whence  came  Charlotte  Bronte? 
Stand  on  the  old  gray  steps  of  that  Haworth  par- 
sonage, and  cry  out  the  question  over  the  moors 
billowing  up  from  the  horizon  to  your  feet.  Echo 
will  answer  "Whence?" 

There  never  was  author  of  highest  rank  so  uninflu- 
enced by,  because  there  never  was  one  so  uncon- 
scious of,  literary  models.  Even  the  French  trash 
she  read  to  perfect  her  knowledge  of  that  tongue  —  a 
dangerous  experiment  with  less  elemental  natures  — 
was  without  any  effect  upon  her  modes.^     Her  object 

^  So  high  an  authority  as  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  thinks  differently. 
['  Jane  Eyre.'  Haworth  edition.  New  York.  Harper  &  Bros.,  1899. 
Introduction,  pp.  xxvii-xxx.]  There  is  no  more  proof,  however,  that 
the  bale  of  French  books  which  Charlotte  acknowledges  receiving 
in  1840  contained  Hugo  and  De  Musset  (the  possibility  of  which 
Mrs,  Ward  hints  at)  than  that  it  contained  the  merely  ephemeral 
writers  of  the  day.  Why  might  it  not  just  as  well  have  held  the  de- 
lectable fiction  of  the  Countess  Dash  ?  George  Sand  may  have  had 
some  influence  upon  her  style.  But  the  point  here  contended  for  is 
the  absolute  independence  of  her  idea ;  and  Mrs.  Ward  admits  that 
the  differences  between  the  two  are  fundamental,  and  that  Charlotte 
Bronte's  stuff  is  "  English,  Protestant,  law-respecting,  conventional 
even." 

She  had  only  a  qualified  regard  for  the  French  woman.  She  writes 
Lewes,  in  1848,  that  she  never  saw  any  of  her  works  which  she  ad- 
mired throughout,  and  thinks  that  '  Consuelo '  couples  "  strange 
extravagance  with  wondrous  excellence."  [Gaskell,  p.  361  ]  '  Jane 
Eyre '  and  '  Shirley '  were  published  before  she  had  read  "  some  of 
Balzac's  and  George  Sand's  novels,"  which  Lewes  "lent  her,"  in  1850, 
"  to  take  with  her  into  the  country,"  and  which  she  returned  with  the 
criticism  that  George  Sand  is  often  a  "  fantastic,  fanatical,  unprac- 
tical enthusiast,"  "far  from  truthful  "  in  "  many  of  her  views  of  life," 
apt  to  be  "  misled  ...  by  her  feelings."  "  A  hopeful  point  in  all  her 
writings,"  she  concludes,  "  is  the  scarcity  of  false  French  sentiment, 
I  wish  I  could  say  its  absence ;  but  the  weed  flourishes  here  and  there, 
even  in  the  '  Lettres.'  "     [Ibid.,  pp.  494,  495.] 


12  Charlotte  Bronte 

was  to  learn  a  vocabulary,  not  to  form  a  style ;  and 
she  did  not  come  in  contact  with  Balzac  until  late  in 
life,  when  Lewes  called  her  attention  that  way.  When 
we  hear  of  Maupassant  apprenticing  himself  to  a  lit- 
erary taskmaster  for  seven  years,  as  Jacob  served 
Laban,  before  putting  pen  to  paper,  —  the  Rachel  in 
view,  perfection  of  style ;  and  when  we  remember 
that  Maupassant  is  but  the  perfected  flower  of  a 
plant  which  had  begun  to  bloom  before  Miss  Bronte's 
day,  we  exclaim :  Here,  then,  is  a  mystery !  if  not  a 
soul  breathing  rather  than  a  mind  working,  at  least 
a  mind  drawing  its  breath  of  life  from  the  soul,  and 
not  from  other  minds.  She  was  one  of  the  queens 
of  literature,  like  Mrs.  Browning,  and  yet  not  a  Hte- 
rary  woman,  like  Miss  Martineau. 


Ill 

Imagination  so  existed  for  this  Yorkshire  girl.  Its 
freedom  from  literary  influence  was  not  only  the  re- 
sult of  the  negations  of  her  surroundings,  but  was  an 
indication  in  part  of  her  determination  to  carve  her 
own  way.  As  we  have  seen,  she  knew  enough  of  the 
romancers  to  deliberately  direct  her  steps  in  the  op- 
posite direction ;  and  that  was  realism.  Realism  to 
her  meant  simply  —  as  it  must  mean  to  all  of  us  when 
we  get  back  to  fundamental  conceptions  —  truth  to 
nature.  By  that  test  she  can  say,  "  Read  Scott  alone ; 
all  novels  after  his  are  worthless."  ^  She  wrote  that 
before  Thackeray  had  startled  the  world  with  a  new 
form  of  realism ;  but  even  after  that  happy  day  she 
would  still  have  defended  Scott  on  the  ground  that 

i  Gaskell,  p.  135. 


Her  Realism  i  3 

his  romantic  situations  did  not  interfere  with  his  sane 
portrayals  of  character.  Though  she  tells  us  that,  in 
sketching  Miss  Ainley,  she  is  not  depicting  a  figment 
of  the  imagination  ["  we  seek  the  originals  of  such 
portraits  in  real  life  only"],  she  also  makes  Caroline 
Helstone  say,  in  the  same  volume,  in  answer  to  Shir- 
ley's question  who  prompted  her  assertion  that  cer- 
tain natures,  like  Cowper's  and  Rousseau's,  were  never 
loved :  "  The  voice  we  hear  in  solitude  told  me  all  I 
know  on  these  subjects."  Jane  Eyre  remarks  that  the 
three  marvellous  water-colors  which  she  has  shown 
to  Rochester  she  saw  "  with  the  spiritual  eye." 

The  trouble  with  the  latter-day  realism  is  that  the 
outside  voices  are  so  loud  it  cannot  hear  the  voices 
of  solitude ;  and  the  spiritual  eye  has  become  dim 
through  its  constant  employment  in  unspiritual  in- 
vestigations. The  story  of  the  life  of  Miss  Bronte 
admits  us  to  a  wonderful  picture  of  simplicity  and 
innocence,  —  the  simplicity  rising  to  spiritual  propor- 
tions as  the  morning  light  of  intellectual  aspiration 
blazes  through  it,  and  the  innocence,  like  that  softer 
light  of  evening,  taking  on  deeper  colors  as  the 
knowledge  comes.  Realism  was  to  her  a  vital  con- 
ception ;  but  we  see  it  exalted,  by  this  independence, 
this  ideality,  this  simplicity  and  innocence.  It  stood, 
first  and  foremost,  for  truthfulness,  and  her  life  not 
being  full  of  varied  experiences,  this  truthfulness 
would  not  allow  her  to  deal  imaginatively  with  situ- 
ations beyond  them.  But  what  sets  it  apart  from 
other  forms  of  reality  is  its  sublimation,  the  actual- 
ities studied  filtering  through  her  sweet  maidenly 
heart  before  taking  their  final  shape.  How  could 
the  critics  suppose  for  a  moment  that  *  Jane  Eyre ' 
was  the  work  of  a  man? 


14  Charlotte  Bronte 

In  the  filtration  it  underwent  the  change.  When 
the  bitterness  of  physical  isolation,  the  sweetness  of 
purity  of  spirit,  the  faculty  of  great  receptiveness, 
and  the  habit  of  dogged  obstinacy,  born  of  devout 
conscientiousness,  meet  in  one  person,  there  is  likely 
to  result  a  certain  hardness,  touched  and  fired  by  a 
purifying  egoism.  No  competent  critic  would  ever 
apply  Chatfield's  witty  definition  of  egoism  to  Miss 
Bronte,  —  "  suffering  the  private  I  to  be  too  much  in 
the  public  eye ;  "  and  yet  no  critic,  competent  or 
otherwise,  could  fail  to  note  the  intensity  of  the  pre- 
dominant inborn  self-emphasis  in  everything  she  has 
written.  Such  subjectivity  is  simply  the  product  of 
conditions  fostered  by  extreme  loneliness  of  life, 
quickened  by  intense  loftiness  of  thought.  It  was 
not  the  forced  atmosphere  of  voluntary  seclusion 
which  she  breathed,  but  the  clean  breeze  of  native 
loneliness.  Hence  the  natural  wildness  of  the  flavor, 
and  the  purity  of  the  bouquet.  "  It  is  moorish,"  says 
Charlotte,  of  'Wuthering  Heights,'  "and  wild  and 
knotty  as  a  root  of  heath.  Nor  was  it  natural  that 
it  should  be  otherwise,  —  the  author  being  herself  a 
native  and  nursling  of  the  moors."  And  this  is  true 
only  in  less  degree  of  the  sister  who  wrote  it.  Picture 
once  more  the  scene :  three  motherless  girls,  with 
restless,  searching  brains  hungered  for  lack  of  food ; 
with  a  father  whose  idyllic  selfishness  left  no  room 
in  his  thoughts  for  a  proper  comprehension  of  their 
difficulties,  and  a  brother  whose  presence  was  a  tor- 
ment; cut  off  from  the  busy  world,  and  with  a  total 
ignorance  of  its  passwords  and  divining  rods ;  wear- 
ing out  body  and  soul  with  fruitless  plans  to  remove 
the  load  of  poverty ;  feeling  conscious  power  in  their 


Her  Realism  15 

veins,  and  seeing  the  beckoning  hand  of  fate,  but  dis- 
cerning not  whither  it  led,  and  groping  in  tracts  far 
more  desolate  than  any  surrounding  moors ;  the 
silence  all  about  broken  only  by  the  tumult  of  rush- 
ing thought. 

The  result  is  idealized  realism,  the  ideality  not 
antagonizing  the  reaUsm,  but  clarifying  it.  The  ob- 
jective milieu  was  her  physical  isolation;  the  subject- 
tive  force  was  her  purity  of  spirit  which  penetrated  it; 
the  result  was  the  glorious  landscape  of  an  apocalypse. 
It  is  unconscious,  artless.  Indeed,  her  lonely  inde- 
pendence is  constantly  manifesting  itself  in  artlessness 
of  one  form  or  another.  That  her  work  has  art  not- 
withstanding is  because  genius  inevitably  is  thus  at- 
tended :  the  kindly  god  provides  fairy  spades  to  dig 
withal.  Untutored  genius  involves  unlabored  art; 
and  when  the  tongue  is  touched  by  fire,  the  form  of 
the  issuing  words  is  of  kindling  beauty. 

We  have  in  Charlotte  and  Emily  Bronte  the  most 
shining  of  all  examples  of  pure  genius.  In  George 
Eliot  the  genius  is  alloyed  by  learning.  Gold  of  the 
purest  texture  may  not  be  put  to  as  many  uses  in  the 
arts  as  the  alloyed  metals,  but  it  is  harder  to  supply 
the  purity  than  the  alloy.  Because  of  her  narrower 
horizon,  Charlotte  Bronte  had  a  more  compelling 
genius  than  her  successor,  whose  acquaintance  with 
the  world's  philosophies  so  overlay  her  thought  that 
the  piled  up  learning  was  constantly  threatening  a 
blockade  of  the  tap-root  of  genius,  whence  flow  the 
living  juices  which  color  the  whole.  The  develop- 
ment of  spiritual  strength  depends  upon  intensity, 
rather  than  comprehensiveness,  of  thought;  and  in- 
tense thinking,  narrowed  by  surroundings,  and  driven 
in  on  itself,  must  result,  if  the  conditions  are  other- 


1 6  Charlotte  Bronte 

wise  favorable,  in  intense  spirituality.  Innocence  of 
life  of  the  world  energizes  and  drives  down  to  its 
deepest  springs  the  search  into  the  life  of  self.  The 
utter  absence  of  world-knowledge  becomes  the  utter 
presence  of  self-penetration.  For  we  must  remember 
that  the  root  idea  of  genius  does  not  only  not  involve 
extraordinary  culture,  but,  on  the  contrary,  conveys  a 
meaning  which  such  culture  may  succeed  in  obliterat- 
ing. So,  if  Charlotte  Bronte  could  not  have  drawn 
Tito  Melema,  George  Eliot  could  not  have  drawn 
Edward  Rochester.  If  the  former  could  not  have 
portrayed  with  like  skill  such  a  subtle  analysis  of  char- 
acter as  is  presented  in  Lydgate,  —  an  analysis  which 
gets  its  power  from  a  wide  knowledge  of  motives  and 
men,  —  still  more  certainly  could  George  Eliot  not 
have  made  the  voice  of  Rochester  ring  through  the 
night,  "  Jane !  Jane !  Jane !  "  to  be  heard  miles  and 
miles  away  by  Jane  —  the  wind  blowing  where  it 
listeth,  and  no  one  telling  whence  it  cometh  or  whither 
it  goeth.  And  yet  it  is  truth  itself;  and  Miss  Bronte 
once  said,  "  in  a  low  voice,  drawing  in  her  breath," 
"  But  it  is  a  true  thing;  it  really  happened." 

I  am  very  far  from  meaning  to  compare  the  genius 
of  George  Eliot  unfavorably  with  that  of  one  who  so 
wholly  differed  from  her.  But  I  do  mean  that  there 
is  danger  of  a  loss  of  the  purest  spirituality  in  the 
broadening  out  of  the  intellectual  sympathies,  and, 
conversely,  that  the  intense  light  of  a  pure  spirituality 
throws  a  shadow  over  those  sympathies.  It  is  one  of 
many  indications  that  Charlotte  Bronte  did  not  write 
novels  with  a  purpose ;  for  with  all  their  nobility,  the 
specialized  interest  of  George  Eliot's  later  works  bears 
the  same  relation  to  Miss  Bronte's  simple  utterance 
as  a  hymn  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  prayer  does 


Her  Realism  17 

to  a  hymn  of  praise.  George  Eliot's  genius  shone 
through  talent,  Charlotte  Bronte's  in  spite  of  talent. 
Each  kind  has  its  peculiar  dangers,  makes  its  specific 
mistakes.  Only,  the  errors  of  genius  led  astray  by 
talent  are  more  far-reaching  than  the  accidental  lapses 
of  genius  pure  and  simple.  The  character  of  Lydgate 
is  perfectly  drawn ;  the  most  searching  analysis  fails 
to  find  the  slightest  flaw  in  the  workmanship.  There 
are  many  incidental  errors,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the 
building  up  of  Rochester.  But  the  book  which  con- 
tains Lydgate  is  a  failure,  so  far  as  it  fails  to  establish 
a  doctrine  which  had  taken  such  an  insistent  hold 
upon  its  author  as  to  warp  her  mind  from  its  proper 
contemplation.  The  nervous  intelligence  of  genius 
prevented  such  a  failure  in  '  Jane  Eyre.'  In  that  one 
respect,  '  Middlemarch '  is  a  mistake.  *  Jane  Eyre  * 
merely  contains  mistake. 

She  was  aware  of  her  dangers.  She  acknowledges 
some  affinity  between  *Jane  Eyre '  and  '  David  Cop- 
perfield,'  but  exclaims :  "  Only,  what  an  advantage  has 
Dickens  in  his  varied  knowledge  of  men  and  things  !  "  ^ 
See  what  her  conception  of  realism  here  stood  for. 
"  Details,  situations  which  I  do  not  understand  and 
cannot  personally  inspect,  I  would  not  for  the  world 
meddle  with,  lest  I  should  make  a  more  ridiculous 
mess  of  the  matter  than  Mrs.  Trollope  did  in  her 
'  Factory  Boy.'  Besides,"  she  continues,  "  not  one 
feeling  on  any  subject,  public  or  private,  will  I  ever 
affect  that  I  do  not  really  experience.  Yet  though  I 
must  limit  my  sympathies;  though  my  observation 
cannot  penetrate  where  the  very  deepest  political  and 
social  truths  are  to  be  learnt;  though  many  doors  of 
knowledge  which  are  open  for  you  are  forever  shut  for 

1  Shorter,  p.  397. 

2 


1 8  Charlotte  Bronte 

me ;  though  I  must  guess  and  calculate  and  grope  my 
way  in  the  dark,  and  come  to  uncertain  conclusions 
unaided  and  alone  where  such  writers  as  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  having  access  to  the  shrine  and  image  of 
Truth,  have  only  to  go  into  the  temple,  lift  the  veil  a 
moment,  and  come  out  and  say  what  they  have  seen, 
—  yet  with  every  disadvantage,  I  mean  still,  in  my 
own  contracted  way,  to  do  my  best."  ^ 

This  lack  of  experience  which  she  regrets  is  the 
cause  of  whatever  failures  we  have  to  reckon  against 
her ;  for  no  matter  how  deliberate  a  realism,  and  how 
absolute  a  conscientiousness,  it  cannot  but  transpire 
that  a  sparse  acquaintance  with  men  and  women  will 
lead  the  wayfarer  into  occasional  culs-de-sac  through 
a  failure  to  appreciate  the  altered  values  in  the  whole- 
ness of  a  character  which  the  side-lights  of  motive 
and  circumstance  thrust  into  it.  It  was  the  passion 
of  this  woman  to  study  the  character  in  its  wholeness  ; 
but  the  absence  of  the  world-knowledge  at  times  ex- 
aggerated, in  her  pure  vision,  faults  which  such  a 
knowledge  would  condone,  and  minimized  virtues 
which  it  would  extol.  She  saw  the  world,  of  neces- 
sity, too  much  through  the  eyes  of  self.  And  yet  the 
failures  are  unimportant;  for,  we  say  again,  element- 
ary genius  is  too  intelligent  to  make  fundamental  mis- 
takes, while  intellectuality  forces  such  mistakes  upon 
the  intelligence.^ 

1  Shorter,  p.  409. 

'  Could  we  indulge  in  impossible  speculations  as  to  what  Currer 
and  Ellis  Bell  would  have  brought  forth  had  their  father's  lot  been 
cast  in  a  busy  city  parish,  we  might  easily  imagine  very  different  re- 
sults. Take  three  examples  from  Mrs.  Gaskell  as  indicating  Char- 
lotte's sturdy  ignorance  of  the  world,  and  incidentally  emphasizing 
the  reflection  of  the  quaint  beauty  of  her  isolation  upon  her  thoughts 
and  actions.    Is  there,  for  example,  in  all  the  tearful  history  of  liter- 


Her  Realism  19 


IV 

Not  to  affect  what  she  did  not  really  experience 
did  not  mean  that  she  must  physically  experience 
everything  she  wrote  about,  but  only  that  she  must 

ary  aspirations,  a  more  touching  instance  of  unacquaintance  with  ways 
and  means  than  the  record  of  the  travels  of  the  manuscript  of  the 
'  Professor '  in  search  of  a  publisher  ?  Having  experimented  with 
bouse  after  house,  it  occurred  to  this  brave  struggler,  as  a  last  resource, 
to  send  the,  to  her  precious,  but  by  this  time  hated,  package  to  Messrs. 
Smith  &  Elder,  a  firm  which  the  sophisticated  candidate  for  fame 
would  have  selected  among  the  first  of  his  choice.  And  the  bundle 
arrives  at  Cornhill  in  its  original  wrapping,  with  all  the  other  direc- 
tions and  cancelled  stamps  upon  it:  so  each  publisher  to  whom 
it  had  been  submitted  must  have  known  perforce  of  all  the  other 
publishers  who  had  declined  it !  Like  her  Jane  and  her  Lucy,  there 
it  stood  in  all  its  disadvantages ;  she  would  not  strip  it  of  a  single  one. 
Let  it  be  accepted  on  its  inside  merits  or  not  at  all. 

The  second  scene  is  one  which  stands  out  in  Rembrandt-like  colors 
which  leave  a  deep  impress  for  all  time  upon  the  heart.  When  Mr. 
Bronte  took  his  daughters  to  Brussels,  their  night  in  London  was 
passed  at  the  famed  Chapter  Coffee  House  of  Paternoster  Row  ;  and 
thither,  "  for  very  ignorance  where  else  to  go,"  drifted  the  two  shrink- 
ing girls  when  they  went  up  to  town  to  break  the  news  of  their  iden- 
tity to  their  publishers.  Never  before,  I  conceive,  in  the  history  of 
those  walls,  which  had  heard  the  wordy  talk  of  Johnson  and  echoed 
the  laughter  of  Fielding,  had  such  guests  been  harbored  there ;  and 
the  one  female  servant  of  the  place — whom  I  like  to  fancy  a  good 
woman  — must  have  taken  a  motherly  interest  in  the  wanderers,  whom 
Mr.  Smith  found  "clinging  together  on  the  most  remote  window- 
seat,"  below  which  came  up  to  them — not  the  "mighty  roar  of 
London,"  but  an  occasional  "  footfall  on  the  pavement  ...  of  that 
unfrequented  street." 

Finally,  Miss  Bronte's  constitutional  timidity  was  so  intense  that 
the  meeting  of  strangers  was  a  positive  torment.  Whenever  it  was 
possible,  she  refused  the  kind  offers  of  her  publishers  of  introductions 
to  the  literary  lions  of  the  day,  even  declining  Dickens,  whose  fame 
was  then  growing  daily.  Yet  this  painfully  diffident  woman  nerves 
her  almost  uncontrollable  bashfulness  to  the  point  of  addressing  a 
Frenchman  in  an  English  railway  carriage,  —  eager  to  snatch  every 
opportunity  to  improve  herself  in  his  language  I 


20  Charlotte  Bronte 

feel  mentally  the  absolute  truth  of  it.  Whatever 
faults  there  are  He  in  the  exaggeration  her  intense 
fidelity  placed  upon  this  conception.  Her  anxiety 
not  to  falsify,  her  determination  to  paint  people  as 
she  sees  them,  warts  and  all,  results  in  a  rather  slim 
number  of  agreeable  people.  Always  excepting 
Shirley  —  for  Shirley,  be  it  always  remembered,  is 
Emily  —  the  only  characters  in  her  novels  free  from 
sorrowful  humors  of  some  sort  are  the  Misses  Rivers, 
Mrs.  Fairfax,  and  Miss  Temple,  —  all  in  her  first  great 
fiction  ;  which,  with  the  addition  of  little  Henry  Symp- 
son  from  '  Shirley,'  and  Miss  de  Bassompierre  from 
'  Villette '  complete  the  list.  I  do  not  include  Caro- 
line Helstone  in  the  category,  although  she  is  a 
lovable  girl,  because  she  is  in  part  an  idealized  por- 
trait of  Charlotte  Bronte  herself,  —  she  coyly  placing 
herself  in  a  romantic  atmosphere  for  once  (as  if  she 
could  not  bear  to  part  from  Emily  after  having  placed 
her  there  first),  and  attempting  to  hide  from  discovery 
in  such  an  unusual  course  by  speaking  in  the  third 
person. 

The  rigor  of  her  portrayals,  we  cannot  but  feel,  is 
occasionally  overdone.  Her  portrait  of  Madame  Beck, 
for  example,  is  too  severe,  although  we  know  the 
provocations.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  "  not 
the  agony  in  Gethsemane,  not  the  death  on  Calvary, 
could  have  wrung  from  her  eyes  one  tear."  Lucy 
had,  at  least,  considerable  freedom  there,  and  was 
apparently  allowed  to  go  out  evenings,  even  to  the 
theatre,  with  Dr.  John,  when  she  so  desired.  She 
just  mentions  some  of  Madame  Beck's  good  points, 
showing,  in  spite  of  her  antipathy,  and  except  for  its 
Jesuitry,  that  the  school  was  a  rationally  managed  one, 
and  that  if  the  pupils  were  not  happy,  it  was  not 


Her  Realism  21 

wholly  Madame  Beck's  fault.  Because  Miss  Bronte 
believed  all  men  and  women  to  be  imperfect,  her 
characters  reflect  this  belief,  —  sometimes  to  an  un- 
pleasant degree  of  truthfulness.  Even  Robert  Moore, 
fine  fellow  as  he  is,  is  made  to  sacrifice  to  Baal  by- 
turning  his  back  on  Caroline,  and  seeking  matrimonial 
alliance  with  a  pecuniary  end  in  view.  And  on  the 
night  of  Robert's  confession  of  his  meanness,  the 
sturdy  Yorke  himself  tells  a  "  dark  truth,"  namely, 
that  if  /lis  old  sweetheart  had  loved  him  as  he  once 
fancied  he  loved  her ;  if  he  "  had  been  secure  of  her 
affection,  certain  of  her  constancy,  been  irritated  by 
no  doubts,  stung  by  no  humiliations  .  .  .  the  odds 
were  (he  let  his  hand  fall  heavy  on  the  saddle)  that 
he  should  have  left  her  !  "  No  marvel  that  after  this, 
"  they  rode  side  by  side  in  silence."  Miss  Bronte 
does  not  express  any  scorn  of  men,  as  apart  from 
women,  here,  but  holds  the  glass  to  human  nature. 
For  she  who  drew  Edward  Crimsworth  and  Brockle- 
hurst  also  painted  Jane  Eyre's  aunt  and  Madame 
Beck,  —  to  say  nothing  of  Mrs.  Yorke,  into  whose 
mouth  she  puts  the  spitfire  of  the  Quarterly's  very 
words,  thus  showing  herself  capable  of  bright  revenge. 

But,  though  we  feel  the  austerity  of  her  treatment, 
though  we  see  that  the  arrow  aimed  at  exactness 
may  fall  below  the  heart  of  the  centre  because  not 
directed  above  it,  though  the  truth  which  she  finds 
is  at  times  a  little  too  harsh  for  common  vision,  still 
—  such  is  her  general  truthfulness  —  her  impersona- 
tions do  not  cease  to  interest  because  '  disagreeable ; ' 
nay,  none  of  her  strongest  characters  are  among  the 
exceptions. 

And  the  severity  is  always  keen  against  herself. 
Her  portraits  of  the  Professor,  Jane  Eyre,  and  Lucy 


22  Charlotte  Bronte 

Snowe  intend  to  urge  the  next  to  impossible  like- 
lihood of  their  originals  to  win  that  afifection  for 
which  they  were  perishing  because  of  the  natural 
obstacles  their  dispositions  offered  to  popular  esteem. 
Who  does  not  remember  how  their  author  is  con- 
stantly checking  and  subduing  their  dreams  of  happi- 
ness? Such  dreams  are  madness,  she  says  again  and 
again  ;  and  she  makes  her  heroines  plain  and  unpre- 
possessing and  prim  and  outwardly  cold,  in  order  to 
make  the  chances  of  happiness  fantastic.  She  was 
aiming,  as  we  know  from  the  preface  to  the  '  Pro- 
fessor,' against  the  fallacious  romanticism  of  the  day, 

—  the  "  passionate  preference  for  the  wild,  wonder- 
ful, and  thrilling."  "  I  said  to  myself  that  my  hero 
should  work  his  way  through  hfe  as  I  had  seen  real 
living  men  work  theirs ;  that  he  should  not  get  a 
shilling  he  had  not  earned;  that  no  sudden  turn 
should  lift  him  in  a  moment  to  wealth  and  high  sta- 
tion ;  that  whatever  small  competency  he  might  gain 
should  be  won  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow ;  .  .  .  that 
he  should  not  even  marry  a  beautiful  girl  or  a  lady 
of  rank.  As  Adam's  son  he  should  share  Adam's 
doom,  and  drain  throughout  life  a  mixed  and  mode- 
rate cup  of  enjoyment." 

And  so  she  places  Jane  and  Lucy  in  adverse  cir- 
cumstances such  as  she  was  personally  acquainted 
with,  that  they  may  look  the  hardest  facts  of  life  full 
in  the  face.  When  Lucy  —  in  whom  there  is  even 
more  of  Charlotte  Bronte  than  in  Jane — is,  in  her 
incomparable  way,  endeavoring  to  propitiate  the 
future  by  realizing  the  present,  she  soliloquizes: 

Is   there  nothing  more  for  me  in  life  —  no  true  home 

—  nothing  to  be  dearer  to  me  than  myself,  and  by  its  par- 


Her  Realism  23 

amount  preciousness  to  draw  from  me  better  things  than  I 
care  to  cultivate  for  myself  only?  Nothing  at  whose  feet  I 
can  willingly  lay  down  the  whole  burden  of  human  egotism, 
and  gloriously  take  up  the  nobler  charge  of  laboring  and 
living  for  others  ?  I  suppose,  Lucy  Snowe,  the  rule  of  your 
life  is  not  to  be  so  rounded ;  for  you  the  crescent  phase 
must  suffice.  Very  good  !  I  see  a  huge  mass  of  my  fellow- 
creatures  in  no  better  circumstances.  I  see  that  a  great 
many  men,  and  more  women,  hold  their  span  of  life  in  con- 
ditions of  denial  and  privation.  I  find  no  reason  why  I 
should  be  of  the  few  favored.  I  believe  in  some  blending 
of  hope  and  sunshine  sweetening  the  worse  lots.  I  believe 
that  this  life  is  not  all ;  neither  the  beginning  nor  the  end. 
I  believe  while  I  tremble ;  I  trust  while  I  weep.  ...  It  is 
right  to  look  our  life  accounts  bravely  in  the  face  now  and 
then,  and  settle  them  earnestly.  And  he  is  a  poor  self- 
swindler  who  lies  to  himself  while  he  reckons  the  items, 
and  sets  down  under  the  head  "  happiness  "  that  which  is 
misery.  Call  anguish  anguish,  and  despair  despair ;  write 
both  down  in  strong  characters  with  a  resolute  pen ;  you 
will  the  better  pay  your  debt  to  Doom.  Falsify;  insert 
"  privilege  "  where  you  should  have  written  *'  pain,"  and 
see  if  your  mighty  creditor  will  allow  the  fraud  to  pass,  or 
accept  the  coin  with  which  you  would  cheat  him.  Offer 
to  the  strongest,  if  the  darkest,  angel  of  God's  host  water 
when  he  has  asked  blood  —  will  he  take  it  ?  Not  a  whole 
pale  sea  for  one  red  drop. 

That  she  carries  it  too  far  in  her  supreme  effort  is 
evidenced  by  the  ending  of  '  Villette.'  Her  father, 
generally  wrong,  was  right  in  insisting  upon  a  happy 
conclusion  there.  The  matter  of  endings  is  always 
to  be  determined  by  the  logical  drift  of  the  plot.  If 
without  an  insult  to  rational  intelligence  Jack  may 
have  Jill,  we  poor  mortals  who  love  a  lover  want  it 


24  Charlotte  Bronte 

brought  about ;  but  if  it  can  be  done  only  by  a  gym- 
nastic performance,  we  would  prefer  a  little  heart- 
ache and  great  spiritual  satisfaction  to  a  reconciled 
father,  a  made-up  quarrel,  and  a  happy  marriage,  — 
all  accompanied  by  strong  mental  depression.  But 
surely,  Paul  Emmanuel's  ship  might  have  come  back, 
and  the  "  pain-pressed  pilgrim  "  ended  her  days  in 
certain  joy,  without  any  shock  to  the  trained  percep- 
tions. I  suspect  she  had  been  led,  somewhat  against 
her  conscience,  to  make  '  Jane  Eyre  '  and  '  Shirley ' 
close  happily;  and  in  her  final  work,  into  which  the 
whole  strong  essence  of  her  suffering  was  infused,  she 
was  determined  not  to  be  swayed  from  her  fell  tragic 
purpose.  She,  who  is  usually  so  logical,  is  forced 
by  this  Spartan  fixedness  not  to  be  led  into  paths 
of  dalliance  to  an  illogical,  and  therefore  inartistic, 
conclusion. 

Her  feelings  were  kept  under  the  surveillance  of 
distrust,  owing  to  her  nervous  shrinking  from  outward 
display.  So,  while  there  is  a  consequent  inward  ex- 
pansion, the  published  result  is  often  a  lack  of  warmth 
in  the  portrayal  of  character.  It  was  as  if  she 
dreaded  to  praise  too  eagerly  through  fear  of  a  rejec- 
tion of  the  gift  from  such  an  insignificant  giver :  the 
fancied  repulse  overcame  the  actual  impulse.  For 
example :  — 

I  liked  her.  It  is  not  a  declaration  I  have  often  made 
concerning  my  acquaintance  in  the  course  of  this  book. 
The  reader  will  bear  with  it  for  once.  Intimate  intercourse, 
close  inspection,  disclosed  in  Paulina  only  what  was  deli- 
cate, intelligent,  and  sincere,  therefore  my  regard  for  her 
lay  deep.  An  admiration  more  superficial  might  have  been 
more  demonstrative.     Mine,  however,  was  quiet. 


Her  Realism  25 

Because  of  this  her  minor  characters  are  forgotten, 
except  by  her  close  students,  and  only  her  great 
creations,  like  Rochester  and  Emmanuel,  are  remem- 
bered, because  with  them  only  does  the  passion  burn 
through  the  timidity. 

One  feels  a  primness,  a  restriction;  but  it  is  not 
owing,  as  has  been  supposed,  to  an  old-maidenish 
prudery,  but  to  a  young-maidenish  modesty,  —  the 
modesty  of  a  maid  of  her  time,  which  is  different 
from  that  of  the  present  day;  and  which  was  exag- 
gerated even  for  her  time  by  the  seclusion  of  her  sur- 
roundings. But  —  such  are  the  happy  recompenses 
of  genius  —  nearly  every  negation  in  such  an  order 
of  mind  stands  for  the  corresponding  acquisition. 
The  primness  results  in  a  fine  logical  exactness,  and 
fulfils  one  of  the  minor  definitions  of  genius,  —  "  infi- 
nite painstaking." 

It  is  her  logic,  in  general,  that  makes  her  delinea- 
tions so  sharp,  —  her  logic  leagued  with  her  stout 
conscientiousness.  Nearly  every  other  author  would 
have  softened  the  picture  of  the  death-bed  of  Mrs. 
Reed.  Not  she.  It  is  a  splendid,  if  terrible,  picture 
of  death-bed  remorse,  without  any  death-bed  repent- 
ance, —  the  pain  of  a  guilty  conscience  without  the 
change  of  the  spiritual  attitude  towards  her  sin  which 
is  signified  in  the  more  effective  word,  and  without 
which  the  remorse  is  futile  and  cowardly.  The  author 
pities  her,  and  makes  Jane  forgive  her.  Miss  Bronte's 
attitude  is  eminently  Christian ;  but  her  clear-eyed 
genius  penetrates  the  mists  of  sentimentality  raised 
by  those  who  conjure  up  final  events  in  accordance 
with  pious  hopes  as  against  assured  certainties,  and 
perceives  that  "  it  was  too  late  for  her  to  make  now  the 
effort  to  change  her  habitual  frame  of  mind :  living, 


26  Charlotte  Bronte 

she  had  ever  hated  me  —  dying,  she  must  hate  me 
still."  Inexorable,  you  say.  Yes,  but  bravely  true ; 
and  though  to  be  contemplated  with  tears,  yet  full  of 
a  stronger  morality  than  that  of  the  eleventh-hour 
repentance  of  average  fiction.  As  she  sowed,  she 
reaped.  It  is  stern,  just,  perfect.  But  it  required 
courage  to  set  it  forth ;  and  it  is  perhaps  the  finest 
evidence  in  Miss  Bronte's  work  of  her  logical  mind 
and  conscientious  spirit,  —  two  characteristics,  I 
believe,  more  pre-eminently  twined  in  her  than  in  any 
other  author.  To  such  a  marriage  must  we  trace  her 
"  severity,"  — a  legitimate  child  of  honest  parents. 

V 

One  might  ask,  if  she  did  not  affect  what  she  did 
not  really  experience,  how  she  came  to  make  those 
social  blunders  in  'Jane  Eyre'  which  gave  the  re- 
viewers such  a  turn.  Miss  Bronte  doubtless  thought 
she  had  found  the  experience  in  the  homes  in  which 
she  had  led  the  life  of  a  dependant ;  and  Miss  Ingram 
was  doubtless  intended  to  reflect  some  supercilious 
miss  who  had  crossed  the  path  of  the  little  governess, 
wincing  at  the  contrast  between  careless  freedom  and 
careworn  slavery, —  between  proud  looks  and  a  high 
stomach  and  their  utter  physical  and  psychical  oppo- 
sites.  It  is  quite  possible  she  exaggerated  the  contrast, 
her  natural  retiring  shyness  magnifying  what  seemed 
to  her  the  reverse  of  shy  into  something  bolder  than 
it  really  was.  It  is  simply  one  of  the  faults  of  inten- 
sity unchecked  by  experience,  —  one  of  the  marks  of  a 
lack  of  technical  training.  It  does  not  interfere  with 
her  general  veracity.  Even  in  such  details  as  per- 
tained to  the  fashionable  life  she  was  ignorant  of,  the 


Her  Realism  27 

falsity  is  only  in  the  details.  The  character  of  Miss 
Ingram  is  clearly  enough  seen  through  all  the  faults 
of  manner  in  telling  it. 

Veracity  was  more  than  a  study  with  Miss  Bronte; 
it  was  a  passion.  The  emphasis  laid  upon  it  at  times 
had  its  outcome  in  an  exaggeration  which  defeated 
the  very  purpose  of  its  aim,  making  the  situation  un- 
likely where  it  was  only  meant  to  be  intense.  It  is 
hard  to  believe,  for  example,  that  the  silence  following 
the  interruption  of  the  marriage  ceremony  of  Jane 
Eyre  and  Rochester  lasted  for  ten  minutes.  A  ten- 
minutes  silence  at  such  a  time  is  a  sizable  slice.  Of 
the  same  sort  is  her  description  of  Graham  conferring 
with  Lucy  about  his  impending  interview  with  Mr. 
Home.  His  fate  hung  on  the  outcome  of  that  inter- 
view ;  and  yet  so  anxious  is  the  author  to  keep  before 
the  reader  the  idea  of  the  gay,  debonair  Graham,  —  the 
picture  set  forth  at  the  beginning  of  the  story  ["  a 
handsome,  faithless-looking  youth  .  .  .  his  smile  fre- 
quent, and  destitute  neither  of  fascination  nor  of 
subtlety  "],  —  that,  although  she  makes  his  hand  trem- 
ble and  a  "  vital  suspense  alternately  hold  and  hurry 
his  breath,"  she  can  calmly  assure  us  that  in  all  this 
trouble  "  his  smile  never  faded."  It  is  also  a  tax 
upon  our  credulity  to  accept  the  cool  statement  that 
the  knowledge  possessed  by  Helstone  and  Moore  that 
they  stood  a  good  chance  of  being  shot  from  behind 
a  wall,  that  drizzling  night  they  went  on  their  danger- 
ous errand  to  Stillbro'  Moor,  made  them  "  elate."  I 
am  convinced  that  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  himself 
would  hardly  be  elated  with  the  idea  of  being  shot  in 
the  dark.  But  her  notion  was  to  lay  emphasis  on  the 
fact  of  their  "  steely  nerves  and  steady-beating  hearts." 
It  is  merely  another  example  of  over-emphasis,  almost 


2  8  Charlotte  Bronte 

her  only  fault  in  character  drawing,  and  a  natural 
fault  of  writers  who  feel  their  convictions  intensely, 
and  whose  faithful  realism  is  harassed  by  ideality. 

Not  to  multiply  instances,  let  us  say,  in  conclusion, 
that  delirious  persons  do  not  talk  just  like  Caroline 
Helstone  in  her  wanderings.  What  causes  some  of 
Miss  Bronte's  conversations  to  seem  unreal  is  her 
making  her  characters  say  to,  what  other  novelists 
would  make  them  say  of,  each  other.  This  is  also  the 
fruit  of  the  unusual  conditions  of  her  life.  She  thought, 
as  it  were,  out  loud,  as  is  the  habit  of  persons  much 
accustomed  to  solitariness. 

There  is  a  lack  of  skill,  too,  in  the  management  of 
the  plot,  and  for  the  same  reasons.  For,  given  sim- 
plicity, innocence,  love  of  truth,  as  the  basic  character, 
and  intensity  as  the  temperament,  and  such  mechani- 
cal complexities  as  the  arrangement  and  joining  to- 
gether of  all  the  parts  (which  requires  a  technical 
gift  quite  different  from  that  of  the  pure  conceiving 
of  character)  will  only  bewilder  and  confuse.  It  is 
extremely  improbable  that  the  presence  of  the  mani- 
acal wife  in  Thornfield  could  have  been  concealed 
from  Mrs.  Fairfax  and  the  servants,  and  that  their 
suspicions  should  not  have  been  conveyed  to  Jane. 
There  is  no  need  for  the  elaborate  portraiture  of  the 
king  and  queen  of  Belgium  in  '  Villette.'  They  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  story,  and  are  of  no  interest  in 
themselves:  with  such  matter  crowded  into  it,  the 
book  ceases  to  be  a  story,  and  becomes  a  journal. 
And  all  that  intense  picturing  of  Miss  Marchmont's 
sufferings,  at  the  beginning  of  the  same  book,  might 
have  been  omitted. 

It  was  a  too  careful  notice  of  such  seeming  care- 
lessness that  moved  the  criticisms  of  those  reviewers 


Her  Realism  29 

who  made  such  a  stir  in  their  day,  but  who  are  now 
forgotten,  while  the  object  of  their  attack  lives  on. 
They  were  honest  enough,  though  mistaken  and  not 
far-seeing.  They  could  not  penetrate  the  veil  of  the 
mystery ;  nor  could  they  know  what  we  know  of  the 
personal  life  and  aspirations  of  one  who  was  to  them 
simply  a  new  novelist  to  earn  some  daily  bread  over ; 
whose  name  and  whose  sex  was  a  riddle,  and  who 
used  a  language  not  before  heard,  and  therefore  open 
to  conservative  opposition.  The  famous  Qtiarterly 
Review  article  ^  would  have  been  ///famous  only  on 

1  The  subsequent  history  of  this  article  is  one  of  the  most  curious 
instances  in  literary  records  of  mistaken  application.  Its  supposed 
author  was  Lockhart,  and  Miss  Bronte's  defenders  have  made  it  hot 
for  his  memory.  For  over  forty  years  he  was  held  up  to  public 
beating,  —  Mr.  Swinburne  ['  A  Note  on  Charlotte  Bronte.*  London  : 
Chatto  &  Windus,  1877]  and  Mr.  Birrell  ['  Charlotte  Bronte.' 
London :  Walter  Scott,  1877]  laying  on  particularly  heavy  strokes  as 
they  passed  by.  Yet  they  were  not  certain  of  the  authorship ;  and, 
of  course,  it  did  not  cross  their  minds  that  the  writer  might  have  been 
a  woman.  "  Who  wrote  the  article,"  says  Mr.  Birrell,  "  is  not  publicly 
known"  [p.  108].  And  yet  thirty-eight  years  before  that,  Charlotte 
and  her  publishers  knew  that  Miss  Rigby  (afterwards  Lady  Eastlake) 
was  the  author  [Shorter,  p.  347] ;  and  the  Memoirs  of  Sara  Coleridge 
containing  a  letter  to  Quillinan  referring  to  Miss  Rigby  in  this  con- 
nection were  published  several  years  .before  Mr.  Swinburne  and 
Mr.  Birrell  wrote  their  monographs.  The  article  was  certainly  in 
Lockhart's  style,  and  in  keeping  with  the  traditions  of  the  Quarterly. 
Charlotte  said,  before  she  was  informed  of  the  authorship,  that  the 
writer  was  "  no  gentleman  "  [Shorter,  p.  190J.  What  Miss  Rigby  felt 
when  she  read  Swinburne,  Birrell,  and  others  may  be  surmised,  for 
I  believe  she  must  have  repented  of  her  wounding  judgments.  And 
it  is  still  open  to  suspicion  that  Lockhart  tinctured  the  article  with 
his  venom. 

There  were  other  reviews  that  hurt  also,  one  of  which  was  our  owu 
North  American  of  October,  1848,  which  may  be  here  alluded  to  as 
an  instance  of  cocksureness  now,  happily,  not  so  prominent  as  in  the 
past.     The  heading  of  the  notice  ran  thus  : 

"  I.  Jane  Eyre,  an  Autobiography.  Edited  by  Currer  Bell.  Boston: 
Wilkins,  Carter  &  Co.,  1848.    i2mo. 


30  Charlotte  Bronte 

the  supposition  that  the  writer  was  personally  ac- 
quainted with  the  novelist.  As  it  stood,  it  was  merely 
brutal  through  ignorance  and  spiritual  dullsighted- 
ness.  Miss  Bronte's  description  of  the  house  party 
at  Thornfield  is  a  failure,  of  course.  She  had  no  real 
leaning  towards  that  kind  of  writing,  and  not  enough 
experience  to  do  it  well ;  nor  had  she  the  gift  of 
many  lesser  writers  to  absorb  into  their  descriptions 
the  essential  masterly  qualities  of  the  descriptions 
of  others.  The  main  point  overlooked  by  her  critics 
was,  and  is,  to  see  through  this  crudeness  to  the  vital- 
ities beyond.  The  critics  took  roughness  for  coarse- 
ness. She  drew  coarse  characters,  but  they  were 
not  coarsely  drawn.     We  see  the  picture,  and  we  say 

2.  Wuthering  Heights.  By  the  author  of  Jane  Eyre.  New  York : 
Harper  &  Bros.,  1848.  2  vols.,  121110. 

3.  The  Tenant  of  Wildfell  Hall,  by  Acton  Bell,  author  of  Wuther- 
ing Heights.     New  York:  Harper  &  Bros.,  1848.     2  vols.,  i2mo." 

That  is,  Acton  Bell,  or  Anne  Bronte,  wrote  all  three!  The  writer 
says,  however,  that  'Jane  Eyre,'  bears  the  mark  of  more  than  one 
mind  and  one  sex.  The  descriptions  of  dress,  "  the  minutiae  of  the 
sick  chamber,"  and  the  "  various  superficial  refinements  of  feeling  in 
regard  to  the  external  relations  of  the  sex"  are  feminine;  but  the 
"  clear,  distinct,  decisive  style  of  its  representation  of  character, 
manners,  and  scenery  .  .  .  continually  suggests  a  male  mind."  It  is 
taken  for  granted  that  Acton  is  a  man,  and  is  the  portrayer  of  that 
portion  of  '  Jane  Eyre  '  which  has  to  do  with  Rochester.  "  We  are 
gallant  enough  to  detect  the  hand  of  a  gentleman  in  the  composition." 
It  is  more  difficult  for  us  to  discover  the  hand  of  a  gentleman  in  the 
review,  or  to  deduce  from  its  tone  what  constituted  the  reviewer's 
right  to  pass  judgment  upon  what  gentlemen  do.  And  certain  kinds 
of  gallantry  are  the  worst  kinds  of  insult. 

Quarterly  reviewers  have  had  their  little  day.  That  evil  trinity,  Gif- 
ford,  Lockhart,  and  Croker,  are  overthrown  Olympians,  and  the  insis- 
tent fairness  of  our  age  prohibits  any  succession  to  the  office.  They 
were  only  fit  to  crush  Delia  Cruscans  and  the  like ;  and  their  pro- 
nouncements were  not  based  upon  what  a  later  generation  demands 
in  the  way  of  judgment.  Think  of  the  critical  ability  of  a  man  who 
could  deliberately  put  Charlotte  Bronte,  as  a  poet,  before  Emily ! 


Her  Realism  31 

it  is  coarse ;  but  that  is  because  the  coarse  object  is 
delineated  with  truth.  One  looking  for  coarseness 
must  go  elsewhere.^ 

1  Lewes'  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  Jan.,  1850,  while  striving 
to  do  her  justice,  was  quite  unpardonable  in  its  flippancy,  and  was 
far  worse,  considering  the  fuller  knowledge  he  possessed  of  the  real 
facts  of  her  life,  than  the  Quarterly's ;  and  her  letter  to  him  was  a 
deserved  rebuke.  [Gaskell,  p.  449.]  Lewes  was  an  acute,  not  a  pro- 
found man.  The  only  critic  of  her  work  during  her  life  who  really 
understood  her,  and  the  first  to  understand  Emily  (too  late,  alas  I  for 
her  earthly  satisfaction),  was  Sydney  Dobell,  in  the  Palladium  (bound 
volume  of  1850).  His  correspondence  with  Miss  Bronte  should  be 
read  by  every  student  of  her  life.  See  '  Life  and  Letters  of  Sydney 
Dobell,'  London,  Smith,  Elder,  &  Co.,  1878.  The  Palladium  article  is 
reprinted  in  the  first  volume. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  in  this  connection,  that  if  the  identity  of 
the  Bronte  sisters  was  not  known  to  certain  persons  in  London  before 
the  question  "  Who  is  Currer  Bell.'"  passed  from  lip  to  lip  over 
England,  it  argues  for  much  lack  of  penetration.  Charlotte  began 
her  correspondence  with  the  firm  of  Aylott  &  Jones  concerning  the 
production  of  the  Poems  by  the  Bells  as  early  as  January,  1846.  She 
wrote  from  Haworth,  and  under  her  own  name,  as  sponsor  for  Currer 
Bell.  It  is  very  remarkable  that  this  firm  contributed  nothing  to  the 
elucidation  of  the  problem  which  sprang  up  upon  the  publication  of 
'Jane  Eyre,' for  they  knew  at  lea.st  that  Currer  Bell  was  the  friend 
of  Charlotte  Bronte,  and  that  Charlotte  Bronte's  home  was  Haworth. 
The  identity  of  the  initials  must  also  have  seemed  suspicious.  If  they 
knew  and  kept  silence,  it  is  one  of  the  most  notable  silences  on 
record.  Messrs.  Smith  and  Elder  must. also  have  had  their  unpub- 
lished suspicions,  for  the  same  reason. 

One  of  the  most  significant  indications  of  the  entire  change  of  view 
we  have  undergone  in  our  social  attitude  towards  women  may  be 
found  in  Southey's  well-known  letter  to  Miss  Bronte.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  some  old-fashioned  gentlemen  may  still  applaud  the 
advice,  but  the  point  is  that  if  Southey  had  to  deal  with  the  subject 
now,  he  would  write  differently :  it  is  not  now  the  view  of  literary 
men.  What  gave  our  author  special  offence  in  the  criticisms  of  her 
work  was  the  folly  and  crime  of  blaming  her  for  writing,  as  a  woman, 
what  would  have  been  condoned  in  a  man.  She  was  one  of  the  first 
to  stand  for  the  sexlessness  of  art.  She  asked  for  praise  or  condem- 
nation for  the  work's  sake,  not  because  she,  a  woman,  did  it;  and  her 
struggle  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  final  literary  emancipation  of 
womanhood,    "  Literature  cannot  be  the  business  of  a  woman's  life. 


32  Charlotte  Bronte 


VI 

Her  artlessness  is  shown  on  many  sides.  For  exam- 
ple, it  is  everywhere  evident  in  her  faihng  to  screen 
the  locality  of  her  story.  All  the  places  mentioned 
in  the  books  are  places  known  on  the  maps.  Whin- 
bury  is  Oxenhope.  Nunnely  is  Oakworth.  Morton 
is  Hathersage.  "Field  Head"  is  Oakwell  Hall  near 
Birstall,  and  all  the  other  '  Shirley '  scenery  is  equally 
patent.  The  Haworth  edition  of  the  novels  is  sprinkled 
with  photographs  of  the  originals  of  the  localities 
she  describes  under  other  names.  She  has  not  only 
been  to  the  Brussels  she  writes  of  (unlike  Mrs. 
Radcliffe,  whose  vivid  mise  en  schie  is  wholly  fanciful), 
but  one  may  visit  the  city,  with  copies  of  '  Villette  '  and 
the '  Professor,'  in  hand  and  discover  the  places  therein 
made  famous,  —  the  Rue  d'  Isabelle,  the  Protestant 
cemetery,  the  church  where  the  confession  was  made, 
the  park  to  which  Lucy  stole  at  midnight  on  the 
feast  of  the  Martyrs.     And  because  the  original  of 

and  it  ought  not  to  be,"  wrote  Southey,  on  the  ground  that  the  seek- 
ing in  imagination  for  excitement  would  be  rendered  unnecessary  by 
the  vicissitudes  and  anxieties  of  that  other  life  which,  as  a  woman,  she 
must  accept.  Of  course,  he  could  not  foresee  the  after-fame  of  this 
timid  seeker  for  help ;  and  he  would  even  in  his  own  day  have 
acknowledged,  I  think,  that  in  cases  of  real  genius,  there  is  no  volun- 
tary, arbitrary  "  seeking  "  in  imagination,  but  that  the  imagination 
exists  involuntarily,  a  hungry  call  on  nature,  demanding  vent.  Had 
Charlotte  Bronte  been  less  of  a  genius,  this  letter  of  Southey  might 
have  done  her  harm.  It  is  a  pity  that  he  did  not  live,  as  Wordsworth 
did,  to  know  the  matured  woman  to  whom,  as  a  girl,  he  gave  his 
asked-for  advice.  And  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  was  a 
specimen  of  Charlotte's  verse  that  he  saw :  his  answer  was  appro- 
priate enough  for  that  special  exhibition.  But  it  is  his  generalizing 
that  we  of  a  later  day  have  corrected. 


Her  Realism  33 

Brocklehurst  was  immediately  detected,  Brocklebridge 
church  was  seen  to  be  no  other  than  Tunstall's,  over 
which  that  pious  gentleman  presided.  Finally,  as  all 
the  world  knows,  Lowood  is  no  fiction,  but  another 
name  for  the  all  too  real  Cowan's  Bridge. 

Edward  Crimsworth  curses  his  brother  as  a  "  grease- 
horn,"  —  a  term  which  is  explained  to  be  *'  purely 

shire ;  "  as  if  the  dash  would  not  spell  York  to 

all  who  knew  the  district.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
only  by  roundabout  methods  that  one  may  dis- 
cover that  St.  Oggs  is  Gainsborough.  Indeed, 
George  Eliot  departs  from  geographical  veracity 
by  giving  the  Floss  (J.  e.,  the  Trent)  a  tributary,  as 
if  to  throw  a  too  eager  searcher  after  originals  off  the 
track.^ 

It  is  the  same  with  the  characters :  they  are  simply 
the  occupiers  of  the  places,  all  personally  or  tradition- 
ally known  to  the  author.  The  name  of  Eyre  was  not 
invented.  Dr.  John  stood  for  Mr.  George  Smith,  and 
his  mother  was  the  prototype  of  Mrs.  Bretton.  Cyril 
Hall's  original  was  Canon  Heald.  The  curates  im- 
mediately recognized  themselves,  much  to  Miss 
Bronte's  dismay,  and  made  a  joke  of  the  matter, — 
which  showed  them  to  be  as  bad  as  they  were 
painted.  Mr.  Nicholls  was  let  off  easily  in  the  pass- 
ing reference  to  Mr.  Macarthy.  As  Morton  is  recog- 
nized as  Hathersage,  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  St.  John 
Rivers  is  the  fictional  name  of  Henry  Nussey,  who 

^  Those  wishing  to  identify  scenery  in  George  Eliot  should  consult, 
among  other  papers,  Mr.  George  Morley's  article  in  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine  for  December,  1890  (reprinted  with  illustrations  in  the  1897 
volume  of  the  Art  Journal) ;  '  George  Eliot's  Country,'  in  the  Century 
for  July,  18S5;  also  articles  in  Munseys,  Aug.,  1897,  and  the  Booiman, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  376. 

3 


34  Charlotte  Bronte 

was  vicar  there,  especially  as  the  characters  fit.  We 
have  seen  that  her  discoverer  has  acknowledged  that 
Miss  Ainley  was  drawn  from  life.  The  other  old 
maid  in  the  story  was  also  known,  and  afterwards 
married.  Mr.  Cartwright's  works  at  Liversedge  were 
attacked,  as  were  Robert  Moore's  at  Hollow's-mill. 
Everybody  knows  who  Paul  Emmanuel  was  in  real 
life.  It  is  evident  that  the  Vashti  she  describes  in 
'  Villette '  was  the  Rachel  she  saw  in  London,  There 
was  "  absolute  resemblance "  in  Hortense  Moore  to 
Mile.  Hausse;  and  the  originals  of  the  other  teachers 
in  *  Villette  '  are  mentioned  in  the  letters  from  Brussels. 
A  Miss  Miller  sat  for  the  portrait  labelled  Ginevra  Fan- 
shawe.  Miss  Nussey  says  ^  Charlotte  had  met  the 
original  of  Helstone,  although  she  blended  his  char- 
acteristics with  those  of  her  father.  Mr.  Brocklehurst, 
if  you  will  pardon  me  for  mentioning  it  again,  is  the 
Rev.  Carus  Wilson.  Miss  Nussey  herself  is  commemo- 
rated in  Caroline  Helstone.  Miss  Wooler's  memory 
is  preserved  in  the  picture  of  Miss  Temple,  and  Miss 
Scratcherd  was  equally  well  known  in  the  flesh. 
Helen  Burns  was  Maria  Bronte.  The  demoniacal 
wife  in  '  Jane  Eyre '  was  not  an  invention,  nor,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  that  voice  in  the  night.  Mme.  Beck 
and  her  previous  study  in  the  '  Professor '  were  recog- 
nized at  once.  Compare  the  reference  to  the  time 
wasted  in  art-practising  — 

I  have  in  my  day  wasted  a  certain  quantity  of  Bristol 
board  and  drawing  paper,  crayons  and  cakes  of  color,  but 
when  I  examine  the  contents  of  my  portfolio  now,  it  seems 
as  if  during  the  years  it  had  been  lying  closed  some  fairy 
had  changed  what  I  once  thought  sterling  coin  into  dry 

1  Scribner's,  May,  1871. 


Her  Realism  35 

leaves,  and  I  feel  much  inclined  to  consign  the  whole  col- 
lection of  drawings  to  the  fire ;  I  see  they  have  no  value. 

with  what  Lucy  Snowe  says  of  the  same  thing : 

I  sat  bending  over  my  desk  drawing  —  that  is,  copying  — 
an  elaborate  line  engraving,  tediously  working  up  my  copy 
to  the  finish  of  the  original,  for  that  was  my  practical  notion 
of  art ;  and  strange  to  say,  I  took  extreme  pleasure  in  the 
labor,  and  could  even  produce  curiously  finical  Chinese 
fac-similes  of  steel  or  mezzotint  plates  —  things  about  as 
valuable  as  so  many  achievements  in  worsted-work,  but  I 
thought  pretty  well  of  them  in  those  days. 

Because  Lucy  Snowe  is  Charlotte  Bronte,  as  is  Jane 
Eyre,  and  as  is  the  Professor.  "  Mrs.  Pryor  was  well 
known  to  many,  who  loved  the  original  dearly."  The 
very  animals  of  the  novels  were  the  pets  of  the  par- 
sonage. This  faithfulness  of  reproduction  extends  in 
one  case  to  the  name  of  the  character,  her  most  typical 
Yorkshireman  being  Mr.  Yorke  himself;  for,  says  Mrs. 
Gaskell  of  the  original,  "  No  other  country  but  York- 
shire could  have  produced  such  a  man."  ^  Mary 
Taylor  recognized  the  Yorke  group  away  off  in  New 
Zealand  where  she  read  the  novel,  and  acknowledged 
its  truthfulness.  There  is,  indeed,  a  veritable  triumph 
for  Miss  Bronte's  art  in  Miss  Taylor's  statement  that 
she  and  the  others  were  made  to  talk  very  much  as 
they  would  have  talked  if  they  had  talked  at  all.^ 
That  shows  both  the  faithfulness  of  her  realism  and 
her  logical  power  in  building  an  imaginative  structure 
upon  a  well-ascertained  base.  The  realism  was  not 
mere  phonography.  The  conversations  were  created 
to  suit  the  known  characters.  Imagination  had  full 
sway;  but,  recklessly  unmodifiable  to  every  recog- 

1  Gaskell,  p.  158.  *  Shorter,  p.  251. 


36  Charlotte  Bronte 

nized  norm  as  the  talk  of  the  Yorke  children  seems,  it 
is  welcomed  by  the  most  intelligent  of  them  as  finely 
true.^ 

No  such  list  as  this  can  be  made  of  any  other  writer, 
and  it  is  of  the  highest  interest  as  illustrating  the 
veracity  of  Miss  Bronte's  method.  She  describes  what 
she  knows.  She  had  not  had  much  acquaintance  with 
sea  scenery,  so  there  is  hardly  any  mention  of  the  sea 
in  her  books.  In  making  Hortense  Moore  foreign  in 
dress,  she  makes  the  foreignness  Belgian. 


VII 

Her  range  of  vision  being  narrow,  and  her  truthful- 
ness not  permitting  her  to  extend  it  beyond  the  limits 
of  experience,  we  find  not  only  known  characters,  but 
a  similarity  of  type  and  situation.  There  are  not  many 
men  of  many  minds  in  her  novels.  Hunsden's  pecu- 
liarities are  an  early  study  of  Yorke's.  Dr.  John 
talks  to  Lucy  somewhat  as  Rochester  talks  to  Jane. 
There  is  a  recurrence  of  the  master-and-pupil  situa- 
tion of  the  *  Professor '  in  *  Shirley '  and  '  Villette.' 
Paul  Emmanuel  is  a  moral  Rochester,  in  a  Roman 
Catholic  environment.  Jane  Eyre  and  Lucy  Snowe 
are  twin  sisters,  —  which,  knowing  as  we  do  their  one 
original,  is  a  dazzling  evidence  of  their  beautiful  truth. 
Even  in  the  incidental  situations  of  the  stories  is  this 
similarity  to  be  found.  Louis  Moore's  trifling  with 
Shirley's  desk  is  a  counterpart  of  Paul  Emmanuel's 
with  Lucy's.  Indeed,  this  fondness  for  meddling  with 
other  persons'  affairs  is  quite  an  alarming  symptom  in 
her  heroes. 

^  Regarding  Emily's  work,  one  walking  from  Keighley  to  Haworth 
may  see  the  name  Eamshaw  on  a  sign  before  an  inn. 


Her  Realism  37 

And  that  the  artistic  imagination  did  not  run  away 
with  the  verisimilitude  which  she  made  a  matter  of 
course,  is  sufficiently  proved  by  the  outcome  of  the 
Lowood  controversy.  To  revert  to  George  Eliot  once 
more, — the  comparison  is  inevitable,  —  if  the  latter 
writer  had  had  to  speak  of  a  past  experience  at  a 
school  which,  but  for  some  care,  would  have  been 
immediately  recognized  as  Cowan's  Bridge,  she  would 
have  so  cloaked  the  identity  that  such  a  recognition 
would  have  been  impossible,  or  would  have  cleverly 
intimated  that  the  story  was  of  the  long  ago  and  that 
the  abuses  had  for  a  century  or  so  been  eradicated. 
Charlotte  Bronte  erred  in  these  fine  distinctions,  be- 
cause of  an  absorption  in  her  theme  which  allowed  no 
time  for  other  than  setting  it  forth  downright.  She 
maintained  that  every  word  of  the  Lowood  matter 
was  in  accordance  with  fact,  and  Mrs.  Gaskell  sub- 
stantiated it  from  personal  investigation.^  It  is  not 
surprising  that  there  was  a  hubbub  about  it.  But 
Charlotte  did  not  expect  its  original  would  be  dis- 
covered. She  was  not  a  reformer,  like  Dickens. 
'  Jane  Eyre '  was  not  a  novel  with  a  purpose.  Lo- 
wood was  not  intended  as  a  companion  picture  to 
Dotheboys  Hall.  Dickens  thundered  against  evils 
which  he  believed  to  be  present.  There  were  no 
evils  at  Cowan's  Bridge  when  Charlotte  Bronte  wrote, 
for  the  school  had  been  removed  to  Casterton,  and 
its  objectionable  features  were  a  thing  of  the  past.^ 
Indeed,  she  tells  us  as  much  in  the  story.  Its  bitter- 
ness had  so  pierced  her  memory,  however,  that  her 
on-rushing  thought  did  not  take  the  prudent  steps 

^  Gaskell,  pp.  65  seq. 

2  See  her  letter  to  Miss  Wooler,  Shorter,  p.  262. 


38  Charlotte  Bronte 

which   a   more   deliberative    judgment    would    have 
dictated.^ 

And  I  take  it  that  this  delineation  of  known  per- 
sons and  places  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
"  local  color  "  of  the  more  modern  novelists.  With 
them  it  is  the  celebration  of  the  district,  the  town, 
the  street.  Miss  Bronte  had  no  such  artistic  pho- 
tography in  mind.  Her  scenery  was  not  intended  to 
be  recognized ;  she  fancied  she  had  concealed  it  be- 
hind fictitious  names.  She  had  an  inherent  terror  of 
publicity,  and  wished  the  identity  between  Currer 
Bell  and' Charlotte  Bronte  to  remain  unknown.  The 
things  she  had  experienced  came  to  her  as  the  natural 
things  to  be  described ;  and  in  the  bright  innocence 
of  her  heart,  and  the  quaint  self-deception  of  her  se- 
clusion, she  wove  her  magic  web  around  the  people 

1  Local  tradition,  according  to  Mr.  Candy  [Gentleman's  Magazine, 
vol.  267,  p.  415 :  Some  Reminiscences  of  the  author  of  '  Jane  Eyre  '] 
supports  Charlotte's  statement  that  "  some  died  at  the  school  and 
were  buried  quietly  and  quickly,"  notwithstanding  Mrs.  Gaskell's 
statement  to  the  contrary.  "  In  Leek  churchyard,  a  short  distance 
from  Cowan's  Bridge,  are  two  gravestones,  the  inscriptions  on  which 
record  the  deaths  of  pupils  at  the  school  (one  of  the  names  is  Becker) 
at  the  time  of  the  epidemic  described  in  the  novel.  If  the  date  of  the 
year  —  which  is  somewhat  illegible  from  age  —  is  correctly  deciphered, 
the  pathetic  record  in  'Jane  Eyre  '  is  literally  true."  This  writer  also 
vouches,  from  personal  investigation,  for  the  general  unsanitary  situa- 
tion of  the  place,  and  the  unsuitability  of  the  building  for  the  purpose 
to  which  it  was  put.  In  this  connection,  it  should  be  insisted  that  she 
is,  distinctly,  not  a  "  governess  novelist."  Anne  might  fairly  be  called 
that,  but  not  Charlotte.  She  did  not  have  the  idea  before  her  of 
righting  any  particular  wrongs ;  the  absolute  freedom  of  her  genius 
saved  her  from  that.  Her  direct  progression  towards  truth,  taking 
the  steady  road  of  Realism,  compelled  her  to  write  of  the  heart- 
depressing  and  brain-wearying  trials  of  the  one  dependent  life  which 
she  knew  with  a  personal  knowledge  which  inflamed  her  soul.  She 
was  not  moved  by  the  philanthropic  impulse  of  Dickens ;  only  thus 
could  her  mind  flame  out  its  painful  message. 


Her  Realism  39 

she  knew,  and  made  them  move  in  the  only  paths 
which  occurred  to  her,  —  the  paths  her  own  feet  had 
trod. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  learn  but  little  of  the  cus- 
toms and  manners  of  the  localities  of  which  she 
writes.  The  subjective  crowds  the  objective.  We 
hear  a  little,  it  is  true,  of  the  peripatetic  "  missionary 
basket "  of  parochial  fame ;  there  is  some  mention  of 
the  Whitsuntide  festivities  of  the  neighborhood ;  and 
it  may  be  discovered  that  in  those  days  Mrs.  Sweeney 
dispensed  the  soothing  syrup  which  Mrs.  Winslow  has 
since  made  her  own.  But  were  Miss  Bronte  attempt- 
ing "  local  color,"  surely  we  should  find  some  descrip- 
tion of  the  funeral  arvils  which  the  Nonconformist 
Yorkshire  conscience  reconciled  itself  to  as  a  substi- 
tute for  the  Popish  wake,  and  which  had  a  tendency, 
it  would  seem  from  Mrs.  Gaskell's  description,  to 
change  griefs  of  the  heart  to  pains  in  the  head.  She 
is  silent,  too,  concerning  that  other  Yorkshire  custom 
referred  to  by  her  biographer,  which  would  have  fur- 
nished Mr.  Bunner,  let  us  say,  with  delicious  morsels, 
had  he  been  born  in  Thornton,  —  that  wedding  an- 
them sung  in  chapel,  upon  the  first  appearance  of  a 
newly  married  couple,  by  a  band  of  choristers  who, 
with  the  earnings  of  the  occasion,  invariably  spent 
the  following  night  carousing  in  honor  of  Hymen,  to 
the  great  scandal  of  the  neighborhood.  Another  au- 
thor—  Hardy  or  Blackmore,  for  example  —  would 
have  made  much  more  out  of  the  Gytrash  than  Miss 
Bronte  does  in  '  Jane  Eyre.'  Her  first  consideration 
was  the  portrayal  of  the  radical  elements  of  charac- 
ter, not  the  painting  of  scenery;  and  all  the  vivid 
beauty  of  her  descriptive  powers,  and  all  the  rare 
marvel  of  her  rich  poetic  prose  when  engaged  in  the 


40  Charlotte  Bronte 

depiction  of  woods  and  moors  and  weather,  she  would 
have  held  as  secondary  and  accidental. 

In  truth,  she  who  in  her  own  field  is  the  most 
purely  imaginative  of  all  writers  except  Emily,  is  not 
an  imaginative  writer  at  all  either  in  the  portrayal  of 
incidents  or  in  the  fashioning  of  character  with  other 
than  her  native  clay.  Yorkshire  and  Belgium  are  her 
only  hall-marks.  Her  apocalyptic  visions  have  other 
sources,  —  which  is,  perhaps,  why  they  are  apoca- 
lyptic. Her  stories  are  thin,  and  have  little  outward 
excitement,  the  maniacal  adventures  in  *  Jane  Eyre  ' 
being  the  only  really  stirring  exception.  She  could 
not  romance  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  it.  Only  once 
did  she  break  loose,  when  her  affection  lured  her  into 
the  dream  of  Emily  happily  in  love.  But  it  may  be 
that  she  was  a  better  judge  of  her  limitations  than 
others,  for  *  Shirley '  ranks  below  her  two  greatest 
works. 

Hence  the  curates.  Unlike  George  Eliot,  she 
could  not  draw  a  really  fine  clergyman,  never  having 
met  one.  Mr.  Hall's  picture  is  kindly  painted,  but 
the  talk  of  him  is  too  didactically  pious  for  our  unre- 
generate  taste.  The  purely  priestly  in  Rivers  is  ex- 
cellently, if  sternly,  emphasized,  but  the  asceticism 
drowns  the  humanity.  The  others  seem  to  us  mere 
caricatures.  Caricatures  they  are  not;  they  are  of 
the  type  that  came  under  her  vision. 

VIII 

I  would  not  say  that  Miss  Bronte  had  the  old- 
maid's  attitude  towards  children,  for  that  would  put 
an  unjust  classification  in  view,  my  observation  be- 
ing that  among  the  best  friends  of  children  must  be 


Her  Realism  41 

reckoned  their  maiden  aunts.  Actual  motherhood  is 
not  necessary  to  awaken  the  mother-love  lying  dor- 
mant in  virgin  breasts.  But  she  was  enveloped  with 
the  peculiar  shyness  which  is  as  a  repelling  atmos- 
phere to  the  approach  of  child-confidence.  In  re- 
gard to  the  little  ones,  we  do  not  find  in  Currer  Bell 
any  of  those  sweet  springs  of  understanding  which 
are  fed  from  the  rills  of  a  joyous  instinctive  uncritical 
affection.  Not  that  she  does  not  observe ;  she  ob- 
serves keenly,  but  too  aloofly.  She  is  too  individual : 
her  truthfulness  to  the  special  portrait  stands  in  the 
way  of  a  general  truthfulness. 

Knowing  as  we  do  some  of  the  characteristics  of 
Maria  Bronte,  we  should  hesitate  to  say  that  Helen 
Burns,  her  fictional  representative,  is  an  impossible 
child.  On  the  contrary,  this  portrait  is  not  a  proof 
that  Charlotte  did  not  understand  children,  but  is  a 
proof  that  she  did  understand  Helen  Burns.  But  she 
is  so  individual  that  she  is  not  typical,  and  we  do  not 
recognize  any  of  childhood's  qualities  in  the  charac- 
ter. It  is  not  that  her  talk  is  big ;  but  when  a  pre- 
cocious infant  uses  large  words,  what  gives  charm 
and  humor  to  the  situation  is  the  incongruousness  of 
the  childish  mind  grappling  with  thoughts  as  yet  im- 
perfectly conceived,  —  the  developing  fancy  trying  to 
take  root  in  an  undeveloped  intellect.  His  words 
share  the  fate  of  his  building-blocks ;  they  are  apt  to 
come  tumbling  about  his  head  before  they  reach  the 
upper  stories.  There  is  the  undivorcible  child-atmos- 
phere even  in  the  clever  talk  of  unusual  children ; 
and  what  makes  the  conversation  of  an  extraordina- 
rily developed  child  quaint  is  the  language  in  the 
atmosphere.  But  there  is  no  such  atmosphere  about 
Helen  Burns.     She  talks  like  an  eighteenth-century 


42  Charlotte  Bronte 

essayist.  Her  mind  is  not  even  a  palimpsest,  through 
the  later  writing  of  which  you  may  discern  the  earlier. 
It  is  a  grown-up  mind  of  sixty  years,  without  a  trace 
of  childhood.^  Currer  Bell's  children  are  portraits, 
but  portraits  only  of  extremely  rare  species,  as  if  a 
natural  historian  should  confine  his  observation  to 
the  grotesque  in  nature. 

The  subject  suggests  an  interesting  topic.  Know- 
ing a  little  of  the  originals  of  some  of  her  extraordi- 
nary characters  —  Helen  Burns,  among  others —  is  not 
this  result  of  her  labors  an  argument  against  a  too 
keenly  followed  realism?  Surely,  the  passion  to  set 
down  all  the  accidents*  of  each  particular  person  is  a 
mistaken  attitude  towards  truth.  For  while  there  is 
no  substance  without  accidents,  actual  specific  obser- 
vation should  be  toned  into  a  conformity  with  general 
laws  before  it  is  set  forth  to  view,  unless  it  be  of  that 
kind  which  is  of  itself  the  cause  of  new  law.  Hence 
Romance,  which  supplies  accidents  as  well  as  realism, 
and  which  supplies  them  when  the  resources  of 
realism  fail. 

Miss  Bronte's  strongest  characteristics  are  her  truth- 
fulness and  her  intensity.  She  is,  indeed,  intense  in 
her  truthfulness,  which,  when  combined  with  a  too 
insistent  realism,  irritates  the  attention.  If  the  child 
Helen  Burns,  if  the  child  Polly,  if  the  Yorke  children, 
are  the  outcomes  of  this  truthfulness  to  particular 
details,  are  we  not  justified  in  asking  for  a  little  less 
concentration  on  the  specific,  and  a  little  more  evolu- 
tion from  the  general? 

This  fault  of  particularization  differs,  however,  frontl 
the  fault  which  at  first  sight  seems  akin  to  it,  —  the  fault 

^  Remembering  what  the  father  said  about  Maria,  what  might 
have  been  ours  if  she  and  that  other  had  lived  1 


Her  Realism  43 

of  the  school  which  has  arisen  since  her  day,  and  which 
also  aims  at  reality.  Realism,  pressed  ruthlessly  to 
all  its  minor  logical  outcomes,  passes  to  its  wintry 
death;  and  indeed,  in  our  latter-day  work,  art  has 
been  so  exclusively  employed  in  developing  all  the 
nice  shades  of —  not  character  so  much  as  every  mus- 
cle which  controls  every  motive  which  prompts  every 
desire  which  works  the  piston  of  every  will,  that  the 
vital  juices  run  thin  and  dry  as  they  sluggishly  return 
to  the  heart  of  the  structure.  When  several  para- 
graphs are  devoted,  in  the  finest  play  of  the  subtlest 
of  current  English-writing  realists,  to  an  analysis,  of 
as  intricate  a  delicacy  as  the  workmanship  of  a  Da- 
mascus blade,  of  the  dainty  set  of  ideas  started  in  the 
brain  of  a  Boston  lady  by  the  discovery  of  the  brightly 
polished  condition  of  her  door-knob,  we  feel  that  in 
the  passing  of  that  other  James,  there  is  somehow 
gone  a  glory  from  the  earth.  Miss  Bronte  would 
have  had  as  little  sympathy  with  such  an  outcome 
as  she  had  with  the  romanticists;  for  any  system 
which  involves  in  its  last  analysis  the  absence  of  large 
imaginations  it  would  be  impossible  to  connect  with 
the  name  of  one  in  whom  realism  was  baptized  in 
imagination,  and  whose  style  was  fired  by  passion. 
She  was  too  true  to  herself  to  be  other  than  herself  in 
her  writings.  The  mechanical  mysteries  of  her  art 
had  no  charm  for  Currer  Bell.  In  very  truth,  she 
would  have  denied  fellowship  with  any  craft  which 
would  narrow  art  into  the  grooves  of  a  cunningly 
learned  trade. 

A  more  extended  acquaintance  with  these  mysteries 
would  have  saved  her  from  the  obvious  lapses  of  her 
straightforward  method ;  but  as  the  peculiar  charm 
and  unique  power  of  this  writer  are  wrapped  up  in 


44  Charlotte  Bronte 

her  faults,  —  as  the  lapses  we  speak  of  are  the  neces- 
sary accidents  of  that  method,  —  it  would  be  worse 
than  folly  to  speak  of  them  except  gratefully.  They 
could  not  be  safely  followed  by  imitators ;  it  would 
be  impossible  to  form  a  school  upon  them,  because 
that  would  imply  a  dependence  upon  faults  which, 
separated  from  the  independence  of  Charlotte  Bronte, 
would  glare  balefully.  The  art  which  conceals  the 
art  of  the  narrator  in  the  impersonal  third  person,  for 
example,  is  the  only  safe  art  for  the  majority ;  and  to 
Currer  Bell's  personal  note,  a  reflection  of  which  is 
seen  in  the  form  of  all  her  stories  (for  even  in  *  Shir- 
ley,' Caroline  Helstone,  while  intended  as  a  portrait 
of  Miss  Nussey,  is  instinctively  felt  to  be  in  a  much 
larger  way  a  picture  of  Charlotte  Bronte  also),  are 
due  most  of  her  shortcomings.  Yet  what  would  have 
become  of  Jane  Eyre  and  Lucy  Snowe  if  their  stories 
had  been  told  by  a  manifest  outsider?  The  passion 
of  a  personal  spiritual  experience  could  only  be 
wrought  into  them  by  this  particular  writer  making 
them  stand  for  her  particular  self.  The  first  person 
comes  naturally  with  such  a  complete  emptying  of 
the  absolute  into  the  fictional  self.  Maybe  if  Miss 
Bronte's  brilliant  powers  could  have  been  more  stead- 
ily controlled  by  the  acquired  skill  of  managing  de- 
tails, her  realism  would  have  been  guided  into  the 
narrow  streams  over  which  the  later  school  floats  so 
passively.  But  we  are  profoundly  thankful  it  was  not 
so,  for  we  should  then  have  had  to  look  elsewhere  for 
the  pre-eminent  prose-poet  of  feeling. 

There  is  in  '  Villette '  as  little  plot  as  in  any  pro- 
duction of  the  modern  realists;  but  the  mark  of  diver- 
gence between  the  two  lies  in  the  importance  which 
incidents  occupy  in  the  latter,  with  whom  Dryden's 


Her  Realism  45 

dictum  is  law :  "  No  person,  no  incident  .  .  .  but  must 
be  of  use  to  carry  on  the  main  design."  Miss  Bronte 
was  so  captivated  by  the  study  of  character  that  what 
may  be  called  the  circumstances  of  her  story  are  fre- 
quently quite  accidental  and  apart  from  the  principal 
motive.  Her  accidents  do  not  control ;  and  excellent 
as  her  logic  is,  in  life  logic  does  not  always  control, 
and  accidents  often  do,  which  are  generally  illogical. 
In  our  progression  towards  the  end  of  the  age,  we 
have  reached  the  days  of  composite  photography  in 
art.  The  present  realist  bases  his  work  upon  types. 
Miss  Bronte  took  the  individual  individually ;  we  now 
take  the  mass  representatively.  Who  would  call  Ed- 
ward Rochester  a  typical  man  ?  or  Jane  Eyre  a  repre- 
sentative woman  ?  On  the  other  hand,  in  Silas  Lapham 
do  we  not  recognize,  not  one  man  but  fifty  of  our 
acquaintance?  This  is  the  glory  of  Charlotte  Bronte, 
this  is  her  fame.  The  romanticists  who  preceded  her 
made  their  heroes  impossible  by  making  them  do 
impossible  things,  from  the  standpoint  of  supposable 
experience.  The  histories  of  Rochester  and  Paul 
Emmanuel  are  the  reverse  of  impossible ;  Emman- 
uel's is  even  humdrum  in  its  commonplaceness.  Yet 
the  characters  themselves  are  two  of  the  most  ex- 
traordinary in  fiction.  Rochester  is  preposterous, 
not  because  he  is  called  upon  to  do  things  contrary 
to  nature,  but  because  he  acts  strictly  in  accordance 
with  his  nature.  And  if  the  natural  man  within  us 
grows  weary  of  the  extravagances  of  these  gentlemen, 
the  artistic  man  is  bound  to  acknowledge  that  there 
is  reason  in  their  madness,  and  that  their  words  and 
deeds  are  in  the  finest  accord  with  the  laws  of  their 
being.  "Was  ever  woman  in  this  humor  wooed?" 
will  be  asked  of  Jane  Eyre  only  by  those  whose  ex- 


46  Charlotte  Bronte 

perience  is  bounded  by  the  four  walls  of  a  conven- 
tional home. 

IX 

Purified  realism  is  a  rare  enough  thing  to  be 
thankful  for.  That  is  the  sun,  and  the  defects  we 
have  noticed  are  mere  specks  on  its  surface.  The 
sunspots  do  not  hinder  the  sunshine. 

We  are  told  in  *  Shirley '  that  all  her  characters  will 
be  found  imperfect;  yet  she  is  also  determined  not 
"  to  handle  degraded  or  utterly  infamous  ones. 
Child-torturers,  slave  masters  and  drivers,  I  consign 
to  the  hands  of  jailers ;  the  novelist  may  be  excused 
from  sullying  his  page  with  the  record  of  their 
deeds."  Even  as  we  find  but  few  agreeable  persons 
in  her  books,  so  also  do  we  find  no  debasing  realisms. 
There  are  a  few  jackasses,  clerical  and  lay,  one  sanc- 
timonious hypocrite,  a  spoiled  beauty  or  two,  some 
hard  continental  characters,  a  family  of  tyrannical 
children,  and  Mrs.  Reed,  —  strictly  speaking,  no  vil- 
lains. She  is  a  pure  realist  in  one  sense,  although 
she  placed  her  characters  in  situations  which  a  pure 
realist  of  another  sense  would  delight  in  making  that 
sense  all  too  evident. 

She  has  been  blamed  for  those  situations,  and 
'  Jane  Eyre '  is  still  considered  by  some  honest  per- 
sons a  dangerous  book.  But  without  temptation 
what  is  virtue?  The  glory  of  Charlotte  Bronte  is  her 
spotless  purity,  her  making  virtue  to  shine  through 
the  temptation  and  by  means  of  it.  She  is  really  a 
severe  moralist.  She  condemns  the  '  Life  of  Mira- 
beau  '  because  it  could  not  be  put  in  the  hands  of  the 
young  without  danger  of  impressing  the  grandeur  of 
vice  on   a  colossal  scale,  "  whereas  in  vice  there  is 


Her  Realism  47 

no  grandeur,  .  .  .  only  a  foul,  sordid,  and  degraded 
thing."  ^  This  seems  like  a  commonplace,  yet  she 
wrote  bitterly,  for  Miss  Bronte's  critics  ventured  to 
charge  her  with  such  portrayals.  If  the  weak  only 
were  considered  in  the  writing  of  books,  no  books 
worth  the  writing  would  ever  be  written.  To  the 
pure  all  things  are  pure  is  a  hard  doctrine,  for  so  few 
are  pure.  Her  realism  never  shied  at  ugliness,  but  it 
flew  unharmed  past  sin ;  nor  did  she  commit  crimes 
against  art  in  the  name  of  art.  She  holds  Burns 
above  Bulwer.  Truth  is  better  than  art  is  her  creed, 
just  as  a  man  is  better  than  his  clothes.  But  she  re- 
fuses to  dwell  on  such  aspects  of  the  truth  as  are 
instinctively  known,  and  which  could  only  do  harm 
in  the  telling,  —  the  finer  the  art,  the  worse  the  harm, 

—  and  which  would  thus  militate  against  the  ideal  truth. 
We  live  in  an  age  when  advice  from  high  quarters 

—  if  the  dove-like  innocence  of  such  advice  were  not 
made  unlikely  by  the  hardly  acquired  wisdom  of  the 
editorial  serpent  —  not  to  read  a  certain  book  be- 
cause of  alleged  immoralities  would  be  hailed  with 
delight  by  the  wicked  publisher,  before  the  bulging 
eyes  of  whose  fancy  would  dance,  in  the  best  tricks 
of  type,  the  magic  words,  "  twentieth  edition  !  " 
How  such  a  warning  could  have  been  passed  upon 
the  possible  readers  of  *  Jane  Eyre  '  has  been  deemed 
one  of  the  problems  of  literature.  The  reason,  per- 
haps, lay  in  the  mixed  conventionality  and  pruriency 
of  the  age,  —  this  novel  being  the  first  to  shock  the 
first,  in  the  falsely  safe  folds  of  which  it  was  wont  to 
seek  the  second.  It  was  an  age  too  dull  to  recog- 
nize bright  innocence,  all  the  brighter  because  in- 
nocently  near    darkness;     and   too    materialistic   to 

1  Shorter,  p.  385. 


48  Charlotte  Bronte 

undertake  the  analysis  of  a  situation  which  is  obvi- 
ously (to  those  who  know  Miss  Bronte)  free  from  all 
intention  of  evil,  because  the  situation  is  objectively 
one  for  evil  to  select.  In  the  intention  lies  the  harm, 
and  the  critics  could  not  see  it.  Let  us  cherish  the 
pious  hope  that  somebody  kicked  the  gaping  puppy 
who  compared  his  book  with  hers,  in  that  each  was 
"  naughty." 

It  was  the  author  of '  Jane  Eyre  '  who  said : 

A  lover  masculine  so  disappointed  can  speak  and  urge 
explanation  ;  a  lover  feminine  can  say  nothing ;  if  she  did 
the  result  would  be  shame  and  anguish,  inward  remorse  for 
self-treachery.  Nature  would  brand  such  demonstration  as 
a  rebellion  against  her  instincts,  and  would  vindictively  re- 
pay it  afterward  by  the  thunderbolt  of  self-contempt  smit- 
ing suddenly  in  secret.  Take  the  matter  as  you  find  it : 
ask  no  questions,  utter  no  remonstrances. 

and 

On  my  reason  had  been  inscribed  the  conviction  that 
unlawful  pleasure,  trenching  on  another's  rights,  is  delusive 
and  envenomed  pleasure ;  its  hollowness  disappoints  at  the 
time ;  its  poison  cruelly  tortures  afterwards ;  its  effects  de- 
prave forever. 

and 

I  hate  boldness,  —  that  boldness  which  is  of  the  brassy 
brow  and  insensate  nerves ;  but  I  love  the  courage  of  the 
strong  heart,  the  fervor  of  the  generous  blood. 

And  this  is  the  key-note  of  all  her  work,  which  she 
sounds  in  a  more  professional  way  in  the  preface  to 
the  second  edition  of '  Jane  Eyre  ' : 

Conventionality  is  not  morality.  Self-righteousness  is 
not  religion.     To  attack  the  first  is  not  to  assail  the  last. 


Her  Realism  49 

To  pluck  the  mask  from  the  face  of  the  Pharisee  is  not  to 
lift  an  impious  hand  to  the  Crown  of  Thorns. 

This  is  why  she  admires  Thackeray  so  profoundly ; 
and  yet  she  takes  even  him  to  task  for  his  Fielding 
lecture,  and  cries  out  in  her  splendid  innocence,  "  I 
trust  God  will  take  from  me  whatever  power  of  in- 
vention or  expression  I  may  have  before  he  lets  me 
become  blind  to  the  sense  of  what  is  fitting  or  unfit- 
ting to  be  said  !  "  ^ 

There  are  strong  points  of  similiarity  between  her 
male  heroes :  there  is  in  all  of  them  the  eagle  quality, 
the  note  of  dominance.  That  was  her  ideal  of  a  man : 
she  could  not  look  up  to  any  other  kind.  She  found 
this  also  in  Thackeray,  and,  I  venture  to  suggest,  there 
is  a  hint  of  him  in  Paul  Emmanuel.  Shirley  acknowl- 
edges the  estimable  qualities  of  Sir  PhiHp  Nunnely, 
but  she  cannot  accept  him  because  he  is  not  her 
master  (the  italicized  word  is  Miss  Bronte's).  "  I 
could  not  trust  myself  with  his  happiness;  I  would 
not  undertake  the  keeping  of  it  for  thousands ;  I  will 
accept  no  hand  which  cannot  hold  me  in  check." 
"  Improving  a  husband !  "  exclaims  Shirley,  scorn- 
fully. "  No.  I  shall  insist  upon  my  husband  im- 
proving me,  or  else  we  part." 

Charlotte  Bronte  had  no  fear  of  the  word  "  obey  " 
in  the  marriage  service,  and  would  have  had  no  sym- 
pathy with  the  women  who  jest  about  it;  for  she 
would  have  known  that  such  women  have  not  had 
their  noblest  natures  touched,  or  suffer  from  an  in- 

^  What  a  subject  for  an  Imaginary  Conversation  would  be  her 
two-hour  talk  with  the  great,  lovable,  faulty  giant,  in  which  she 
gravely  reproved  him  for  his  shortcomings,  and  to  which  he  as  gravely 
listened ;  defending  himself,  however,  "like  a  great  Turk  and  heathen; 
that  is  to  say,  the  excuses  were  often  worse  than  the  crime  itself  1 " 

4 


50  Charlotte  Bronte 

capacity  of  full  affection.  Obedience  is  involved  in 
love.  She  took  the  Scriptural  view  that  man  is 
stronger  than  woman  in  judgment,  and  that  obedience 
is  therefore  due  him.  There  is  no  fear  in  that  love, 
for  it  is  of  the  perfect  kind  which  casteth  it  out,  —  the 
love  of  complete  confidence.  Such  is  her  ideal  man, 
and  she  tries  to  build  her  heroes  along  those  lines. 
Rochester  is  a  trifle  too  grand,  gloomy,  and  peculiar 
for  the  taste  of  the  average  woman  of  this  present 
day,  although  I  understand  he  created  great  havoc 
among  the  sentimental  ladies  of  the  late  '40's.  Louis 
Moore  is  our  old  friend  the  Professor  over  again  (and 
the  Professor  is  a  dreadful  prig,  with  his  besides, 
"  guiding  by  smile  and  gesture,"  and,  as  if  that  was  not 
enough,  also  "  smiling  inwardly  "  and  "  bestowing  " 
"proud  and  contented  kisses").  In  our  unsanctified 
moments,  we  have  even  called  him  a  solemn  donkey. 
His  talk  with  Shirley  about  his  "  friendless  young 
orphan  girl "  is  as  outrageous  as  Rochester's  ram- 
blings  with  Jane.  Yet  that  is  a  love  scene  of  great 
strength,  notwithstanding;  and  Shirley  yields  to  the 
man  who  can  master  her  Tartar  better  than  she  can 
herself 

The  genius  of  this  girl  was  equal  to  her  drawbacks ; 
and  through  the  immaturity  —  one  might  almost  say 
because  of  the  immaturity  —  we  see  it  conquering. 
Immaturity,  so  far  from  being  wholly  a  fault,  is,  nega- 
tively, in  given  cases,  an  indication  of  genius.  That 
is,  the  genius  is  so  demonstrable  that  the  immaturity 
cannot  hide  it ;  the  immaturity  is  seen  at  once  as  the 
thin  gossamer  through  which  the  sunlight  shines. 
The  temporal  qualities  of  immaturity  are,  by  their 
very  poverty,  contrasted  with  the  lasting  powers  of 
genius,  just  as  the  sun  shining  through  a  window  may 


Her  Realism  51 

show  hitherto  unsuspected  defects  in  the  glass.  Miss 
Bronte  knew  too  well,  from  the  home  experience,  the 
lapses  of  men  from  her  high  standard,  which,  I  repeat, 
is  the  Scriptural  standard.  The  quotation  recently 
made  from  her  works  concerning  unlawful  pleasure 
had  its  direct  source  in  Bramwell's  life,  as  may  hardly 
be  doubted  when  the  full  context  is  seen: 

I  had  once  had  the  opportunity  of  contemplating,  near 
at  hand,  an  example  of  the  results  produced  by  a  course  of 
interesting  and  romantic  domestic  treachery.  No  golden 
halo  of  fiction  was  about  this  example.  I  saw  it  bare  and 
real,  and  it  was  very  loathsome.  I  saw  a  mind  degraded 
by  the  practice  of  mean  subterfuge,  by  the  habit  of  perfidious 
deception,  and  a  body  depraved  by  the  infectious  influence 
of  the  vice-polluted  soul.  I  had  suflfered  much  from  the 
forced  and  prolonged  view  of  this  spectacle. 

Read  also  the  first  paragraph  of  Chapter  XIX.  of  this 
same  book,  the  '  Professor,*  to  see  how  this  example 
had  weighed  upon  her  soul. 

Now,  just  as  faith  is  strong  only  in  the  midst  of 
faithlessness,  so  does  she  not  deny  her  ideal  because 
of  her  acquaintance  with  the  actual.  The  actual  was 
only  too  real  to  her,  but  the  ideal  was  more  real. 
Jane  Eyre  is  not  blinded  to  the  moral  transgressions 
and  spiritual  sins  of  Rochester.  Both  morally  and 
spiritually  she  is  stronger  than  he.  Where  conscience 
existed  —  and  it  existed  everywhere  in  Charlotte 
Bronte's  vision  —  not  even  love  had  sway, — the 
point  that  her  critics  missed ;  and  it  was  not  until 
conscience  had  reconciled  the  love  to  its  absolute 
demands  that  the  sway  was  accepted.  But  then  it 
was  accepted.     Rochester  is  a  brute,  you  say.     Yet 


52  Charlotte  Bronte 

the  brute  in  him  was  conquered  before  Jane  marries 
him.  It  is  Una  and  the  Hon.  There  is  a  mighty 
strength  in  her  heroes,  especially  Rochester,  which 
shines  back  of  and  out  of  their  weaknesses  —  the 
original  strength  of  man  as  he  stood  in  his  Creator's 
plan.  Her  women,  through  love  for  the  strength, 
subdue  the  weakness  by  accepting  the  strength  — 

He  for  God  only ;  she  for  God  in  him. 

This  is  the  woman's  point  of  view,  and  not  even  the 
new  woman  can  find  fault  with  it  as  portrayed  in 
Charlotte  Bronte;  for  she  makes  the  men  to  whom 
her  heroines  give  such  love  acknowledge,  once  it  is 
gained,  not  their  superiority,  but  the  equality  of  giver 
and  receiver.  "  This  is  my  equal,"  says  Rochester  of 
Jane,  Shirley  is  Moore's  "leopardess," — hardly  an 
animal  to  be  fondled.  No  reader  of  Charlotte  Bronte 
can  ever  forget  the  magnificent  repudiation  of  Milton's 
Eve,  in  '  Shirley,'  yet  the  quotation  from  Milton  stands, 
nevertheless.  For  she  bows  to  the  godlike  in  the 
man,  and  the  man  acknowledges  the  divinity  in  her. 
None  but  those  who  are  entitled  to  queenhood  may 
marry  kings. 

We  have  seen  her  attempts  at  minute  delineations 
are,  unlike  Miss  Austen's,  occasionally  burdensome, 
because  uncorrected  by  the  application  of  general 
principles.  It  is  only  when  her  thought  is  freed  from 
the  petty  harassments  of  her  realism  that  she  becomes 
the  great  writer  that  we  know,  —  the  greatest  writer 
of  passion  in  the  English  tongue.  Then  she  rises  into 
her  pure  native  empyrean  above  these  levels,  and 
takes  her  rank  along  the  high  places  of  the  immortals. 


B.  — HER  ATTITUDE   TOWARDS  NATURE 


It  may  be  stated  without  much  fear  of  contradic- 
tion that  the  majority  of  her  readers  will  always 
pre-eminently  cherish  Miss  Bronte  as  a  painter  of 
scenery.  Atmosphere  possessed  her.  She  was  en- 
veloped in  the  storm,  the  sunset  was  a  personal  glory, 
moonshine  was  the  footstool  of  deity.  She  had  both 
the  "  golden  dreams  "  of  Turner  and  the  golden  real- 
ities of  Constable.  She  could  picture  the  seraphim 
in  ethereal  splendor,  and  she  could  paint  wind. 

Let  us  not  take  low  views  of  this  marvellous  gift. 
It  is  not  merely  as  scenery  that  we  should  view  it. 
There  is  no  mechanical  contrivance  cunningly  in- 
tended to  give  the  picture  title  and  rank  as  a  char- 
acter study  through  the  medium  of  the  surrounding 
weather  conditions ;  the  scenery  is  imbedded  in  her 
imagination,  and  is  not  arbitrarily  selected  for  the 
purposes  of  interpretation.  It  is  like  the  music  which 
is  more  than  a  running  commentary  upon  the  text,  — 
nay,  at  times  like  the  music  which  itself  forms  the 
text ;  and  the  text  is  ever  the  passion  of  the  human 
heart. 

One  might  relate  the  fluctuations  in  the  history  of 
Jane  Eyre  by  a  series  of  canvases  picturing  the 
atmospheric  descriptions  accompanying  them ;  or 
might  transform  into  the  sister  art  these  descriptions 


54  Charlotte  Bronte 

in  a  symphonic  manner  which  would  tease  the  ear 
with  the  rapt  enthusiasm  which  the  eye  feels  at  the 
pictures  of  the  words.  For,  as  in  that  highest  form 
of  musical  composition,  so  in  this  scenic  power  of  our 
author,  the  rhythms  are  contrasted  and  the  keys  are 
related. 

Follow  this  history  for  a  space,  and  feel  the  effect. 
The  book  opens  in  a  depressed  atmosphere,  corre- 
sponding to  that  surrounding  the  little  heroine's  life. 
In  the  very  first  paragraph  there  is  a  "  cold  winter 
wind,"  bringing  with  it  "  sombre  clouds."  "  Raw  and 
chill  was  the  winter  morning"  she  left  Gateshead. 
The  afternoon  of  that  long  day's  drive  "  came  on  wet 
and  somewhat  misty;  "  and,  arrived  at  Lowood, "  rain, 
wind,  and  darkness  filled  the  air,"  like  the  spiritual 
demons  which  were  about  to  encompass  her  in  that 
abode.  In  the  night  she  wakes  to  "  hear  the  wind 
rave  in  furious  gusts  and  the  rain  fall  in  torrents ;  " 
and  when  she  was  compelled  to  rise,  in  the  grim 
dawn,  "  it  was  bitter  cold."  She  goes  out  into  the 
garden :  "  all  was  wintry  blight  and  brown  decay." 

In  the  evening,  during  the  play-hour,  she  "  lifted 
a  blind  and  looked  out.  It  snowed  fast,  a  drift  was 
already  forming  against  the  lower  panes ;  putting  my 
ear  close  to  the  window,  I  could  distinguish  from  the 
gleeful  tumult  within  the  disconsolate  moan  of  the 
wind  outside."  And  mark  that  this  is  not  intended 
merely  to  emphasize  the  wintry  desolation  of  her 
young  life,  but  to  drive  deep  into  the  spirit  her  sym- 
pathy with  the  storm,  and  the  storm's  sympathy  with 
her,  —  the  two  loveless  outcasts  when  others  were  in- 
doors and  loved.  "  Reckless  and  feverish,  I  wished 
the  wind  to  howl  more  wildly,  the  gloom  to  deepen 
to  darkness,  and  the  confusion  to  rise  to  clamor." 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         ^^ 

There  is  always  throughout  the  history  the  same 
correspondence  between  outside  nature  and  inside 
life.  But  one  does  not  think  of  this  "  pathetic  fal- 
lacy "  in  following  Jane  Eyre's  experience,  with  such 
beautiful  unconsciousness  does  she  enclose  nature  in 
the  framework  of  her  thought.  It  was  to  be  expected, 
then,  that  the  Sunday  afternoon  walk  back  from  Mr. 
Brocklehurst's  ministrations  (remembering  the  physi- 
ological condition  of  the  pupils  after  a  day  of  starva- 
tion spent  in  a  paralyzingly  cold  church)  would  be 
set  forth  in  the  usual  weather  strain.  "  At  the  close 
of  the  afternoon  service  we  returned  by  an  exposed 
and  hilly  road,  where  the  bitter  wind,  blowing  over  a 
range  of  snowy  summits  to  the  north,  almost  flayed 
the  skins  from  our  faces." 

The  raging  wind  carries  on  its  wings  the  raging 
spirit.  And  as  the  first  note  of  peace  is  touched 
when  Helen  Burns  calms  little  Jane  with  her  quaint 
and  patient  piety,  so  then  for  the  first  time  we  see  an 
unclouded  night  in  the  sky.  "  Resting  my  head  on 
Helen's  shoulder,  I  put  my  arms  round  her  waist; 
she  drew  me  to  her,  and  we  reposed  in  silence.  .  .  . 
Some  heavy  clouds,  swept  from  the  sky  by  a  rising 
wind,  had  left  the  moon  bare ;  and  her  light,  stream- 
ing in  through  a  window  near,  shone  full." 

After  the  gloom  and  decay  of  Lowood,  she  sees 
before  her  a  reawakened  life  at  Thornfield-Hall,  as 
she  views  the  grounds  from  the  battlements :  "  the 
horizon  bounded  by  2i  propitious  sky,  azure,  marbled 
with  pearly  white."  The  tameness  of  the  governess- 
lot  soon  tells  on  her,  however,  and  on  the  evening  of 
her  return  from  that  walk  to  Hay  made  memorable 
by  her  first  meeting  with  Rochester  at  the  scene  of 
his  accident,  the  excitement  of  that  episode  thrills 


56  Charlotte  Bronte 

all  the  more  vehemently  because  of  the  returning 
stagnation.  She  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  out- 
side world,  and  there  is  a  momentary  rebellion  against 
slipping  on  again  "  the  viewless  fetters  of  an  uniformed 
and  too  still  existence." 

I  lingered  at  the  gates ;  I  lingered  on  the  lawn ;  I  paced 
backward  and  forwards  on  the  pavement :  the  shutters  of 
the  glass  door  were  closed ;  I  could  not  see  into  the  inte- 
rior; and  both  my  eyes  and  spirit  seemed  drawn  from  the 
gloomy  house  —  from  the  gray  hollow  filled  with  rayless 
cells,  as  it  appeared  to  me  —  to  that  sky  expanded  before 
me,  —  a  blue  sea  absolved  from  taint  of  cloud ;  the  moon 
ascending  it  in  solemn  march  ;  her  orb  seemed  to  look  up 
as  she  left  the  hill  tops,  from  behind  which  she  had  come, 
far  and  farther  below  her,  and  aspired  to  the  zenith,  mid- 
night-dark in  its  fathomless  depth  and  measureless  distance  : 
and  for  those  trembling  stars  that  followed  her  course,  they 
made  my  heart  tremble,  my  veins  glow  when  1  viewed 
them.  Little  things  recall  us  to  earth :  the  clock  struck 
in  the  hail ;  that  sufficed ;  I  turned  from  moon  and  stars, 
opened  a  side-door,  and  went  in. 

The  house  was  her  life,  filled  with  "  rayless  cells ;  " 
and  in  that  spotless  night  was  symbolized  that  ideal 
life  beyond  the  range  of  her  piteously  feeble  grasp. 

The  day  on  which  she  formally  makes  Rochester's 
acquaintance  is  fittingly  "  wild  and  stormy."  At  the 
second  meeting,  the  winter  rain  beats  against  the 
panes ;  and  he  unloads  his  Parisian  memories  upon 
her  in  "  a  freezing  and  sunless  air."  The  night  the 
maniac  wife  paid  her  terrifying  visit  to  the  second 
story  was  **  drearily  dark ;  "  and  later  on,  as  the 
tragedy  advances,  and  just  before  she  confronts  that 
grisly  terror  again,  from  peaceful  sleep  Jane  opens 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         ^y 

her  eyes  on  the  full  moon,  "  silver  white  and  crystal- 
clear.  It  was  beautiful  but  too  solemn."  Her  fate 
was  approaching  her,  —  "  beautiful  "  because  she  car- 
ried duty  in  her  closed  hand,  but  "too  solemn" 
because  that  duty  was  so  grievous  to  be  borne.  It 
is  as  descriptive  as  the  music  of  '  Parsival.'  The 
sympathy  of  and  with  nature  is,  as  it  were,  sacramen- 
tally  complete. 

Hope  was  shining  high  for  Jane.  Rochester  was,  in 
anticipation,  hers. 

A  splendid  Midsummer  shone  over  England :  skies  so 
pure,  suns  so  radiant  as  were  then  seen  in  long  succession, 
seldom  favor,  even  singly,  our  wave-girt  land.  It  was  as  if 
a  band  of  Italian  days  had  come  from  the  South,  like  a  flock 
of  glorious  passenger  birds,  and  lighted  on  the  cliffs  of 
Albion.  The  hay  was  all  got  in ;  the  fields  round  Thorn- 
field  were  green  and  shorn ;  the  roads  white  and  baked ; 
the  trees  were  in  their  dark  prime  :  hedge  and  wood,  full- 
leaved  and  deeply  tinted,  contrasted  well  with  the  sunny 
hue  of  the  cleared  meadows  between. 

Then  the  catastrophe  draws  very  near. 

A  waft  of  wind  came  sweeping  down  the  laurel- walk,,  and 
trembled  through  the  boughs  of  the  chestnut :  it  wandered 
away  —  away  —  to  an  indefinite  distance  —  it  died.  The 
nightingale's  song  was  then  the  only  voice  of  the  hour : 
in  listening  to  it  I  again  wept. 

You  hear  the  far-away  echo-like  sobbing  of  a  Fate 
that  would  be  kind,  but  must  be  harsh ;  and  it  blends 
with  the  voice  of  the  nightingale  which  makes  her 
weep.  And  at  the  moment  of  his  proposal,  and 
while  he  is  madly  justifying  to  himself  that  crime,  the 
night  changes. 


S8 


Charlotte  Bronte 


But  what  had  befallen  the  night?  The  moon  was  not  yet 
set  and  we  were  all  in  shadow :  I  could  scarcely  see  my 
master's  face,  near  as  I  was.  And  what  ailed  the  chestnut 
tree?  it  writhed  and  groaned;  while  wind  roared  in  the 
laurel-walk,  and  came  sweeping  over  us  .  .  .a  livid  vivid 
spark  leapt  out  of  a  cloud  at  which  I  was  looking,  and 
there  was  a  crack,  a  crash,  and  a  close  rattling  peal ;  and  I 
thought  only  of  hiding  my  dazzled  eyes  against  Mr. 
Rochester'  s  shoulder.  .  .  .  Before  I  left  my  bed  in  the 
morning,  little  Adfele  came  running  in  to  tell  me  that  the 
great  horsechestnut  at  the  bottom  of  the  orchard  had  been 
struck  by  lightning  .  .  .  and  half  of  it  split  away. 

There  was  the  Lord  speaking  out  of  Sinai,  —  the 
Lord  who  had  been  defied.  The  nearest  approach 
to  it  in  music  that  I  can  think  of  is  the  awakening  of 
the  trombones  in  the  last  act  of 'Don  Giovanni.' 

The  third  appearance  of  the  foul  nightly  visitant 
immediately  precedes  the  wedding  ceremony. 

"  But,  Sir,  as  it  grew  dark,  the  wind  rose  :  it  blew  yester- 
day evening  not  as  it  blows  now  —  wild  and  high  —  but 
with  a  sullen  moaning  sound,  far  more  eerie.  I  wished  you 
were  at  home.  I  came  into  this  room,  and  the  sight  of  the 
empty  chair  and  fireless  hearth  chilled  me.  For  some 
reason,  after  I  went  to  bed,  I  could  not  sleep  —  a  sense  of 
anxious  excitement  distressed  me.  The  gale  still  rising 
seemed  to  my  ear  to  muffle  a  mournful  undersound : 
whether  in  the  house  or  abroad  I  could  not  at  first  tell,  but 
it  recurred,  doubtful  yet  doleful,  at  every  lull :  at  last  I  made 
out  it  must  be  some  dog  howling  at  a  distance.  ...  On 
sleeping  I  continued  in  dreams  the  idea  of  a  dark  and 
stormy  night.  I  continued  also  the  wish  to  be  with  you, 
and  experienced  a  strange,  regretful  consciousness  of  some 
barrier  dividing  us.  During  all  ray  first  sleep  I  was  follow- 
ing the   windings   of  an  unknown   road;  total   obscurity 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         59 

environed  me ;  rain  pelted  me ;  I  was  burdened  with  the 
charge  of  a  little  child  ;  a  very  small  creature  too  young  and 
feeble  to  walk ,  and  which  shivered  in  my  cold  arms,  and 
wailed  piteously  in  my  ear.  I  thought,  Sir,  that  you  were 
on  the  road  a  long  way  before  me  ;  and  I  strained  every 
nerve  to  overtake  you,  and  made  effort  on  effort  to  utter  your 
name  and  entreat  you  to  stop — but  my  movements  were 
fettered ;  and  my  voice  still  died  away  inarticulate ;  while 
you,  I  felt,  withdrew  farther  and  farther  every  moment.  .  .  . 
I  dreamt  another  dream,  Sir;  that  Thornfield-Hall  was  a^ 
dreary  ruin,  the  retreat  of  bats  and  owls.  I  thought  that 
of  all  the  stately  front  nothing  remained  but  a  shell-like  wall, 
very  high  and  very  fragile-looking.  I  wandered  on  a  moon- 
light night  through  the  grass-grown  enclosure  within  :  here 
I  stumbled  over  a  marble  hearth,  and  there  over  a  falleri 
fragment  of  cornice.  Wrapped  up  in  a  shawl,  I  still 
carried  the  unknown  little  child ;  I  might  not  lay  it  down 
anywhere,  however  tired  were  my  arms.  ...  I  heard  the 
gallop  of  a  horse  at  a  distance  ...  I  was  sure  it  was  you ; 
and  you  were  departing  for  many  years,  and  for  a  distant 
country.  I  climbed  the  thin  wall  with  frantic,  perilous  haste, 
eager  to  catch  one  glimpse  of  you  from  the  top  :  the  stones 
rolled  from  under  my  feet,  the  ivy  branches  I  grasped  gave 
way,  the  child  clung  round  my  neck  in  terror,  and  almost 
strangled  me  :  at  last  I  gained  the  summit.  I  saw  you  like 
a  speck  on  a  white  track,  lessening  every  moment.  The 
blast  blew  so  strong  I  could  not  stand.  I  sat  down  on  the 
narrow  edge ;  I  hushed  the  scared  infant  in  my  lap  :  you 
turned  an  angle  of  the  road ;  I  bent  forward  to  take  a  last 
look ;  the  wall  crumbled ;  I  was  shaken ;  the  child  rolled 
from  my  knee ;  I  lost  my  balance,  fell,  and  woke." 

"  Now,  Jane,  that  is  all." 

"All  the  preface.  Sir;  the  tale  is  yet  to  come.  On 
waking,  a  gleam  dazzled  my  eyes :  I  thought  —  oh,  it  is 
daylight !  But  I  was  mistaken :  it  was  only  candlelight. 
Sophie,  I  supposed,  had  come  in.     There  was  a  light  on 


6o  Charlotte  Bronte 

the  dressing  table,  and  the  door  of  the  closet  where,  before 
going  to  bed,  I  had  hung  my  wedding  dress  and  veil,  stood 
open  :  I  heard  a  rustling  there.  I  asked,  '  Sophie,  what  are 
you  doing?'  No  one  answered,  but  a  form  emerged  from 
the  closet :  it  took  the  light,  held  it  aloft  and  surveyed  the 
garments  pendent  from  the  portmanteau.  '  Sophie  !  Sophie  ! ' 
I  again  cried ;  and  still  it  was  silent.  I  had  risen  up  in 
bed,  I  bent  forward :  first  surprise,  then  bewilderment 
came  over  me ;  and  then  my  blood  crept  cold  through  my 
veins.  Mr.  Rochester,  this  was  not  Sophie,  it  was  not 
Leah,  it  was  not  Mrs.  Fairfax :  it  was  not  —  no,  I  was  sure 
of  it,  and  am  still  —  it  was  not  even  that  strange  woman, 
Grace  Poole." 

While  awaiting  Rochester's  return,  and  feverish  to 
tell  him  this  story  — 

I  sought  the  orchard,  driven  to  its  shelter  by  the  wind,  which 
all  day  had  blown  strong  and  full  from  the  south ;  without, 
however,  bringing  a  speck  of  rain.  Instead  of  subsiding  as 
night  drew  on,  it  seemed  to  augment  its  rush  and  deepen 
its  roar :  the  trees  blew  steadfastly  one  way,  never  writhing 
round,  and  scarcely  tossing  back  their  boughs  once  in  an 
hour ;  so  continuous  was  the  strain  bending  their  branchy 
heads  northward  —  the  clouds  drifted  from  pole  to  pole, 
fast  following,  mass  on  mass  :  no  glimpse  of  blue  sky  had 
been  visible  that  July  day. 

It  was  not  without  a  certain  wild  pleasure  I  ran  before 
the  wind  delivering  my  trouble  of  mind  to  the  measureless 
air-torrent  thundering  through  space.  Descending  the 
laurel- walk,  I  faced  the  wreck  of  the  chestnut  tree  ;  it  stood 
up  black  and  riven  :  the  trunk,  split  down  the  centre,  gasped 
ghastly.  The  cloven  halves  were  not  broken  from  each 
other,  for  the  firm  base  and  strong  roots  kept  them  unsun- 
dered  below ;  though  community  of  vitality  was  destroyed 
—  the  sap  could  flow  no  more  :  their  great  boughs  on  each 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         6i 

side  were  dead,  and  next  winter's  tempests  would  be  sure  to 
fell  one  or  both  to  earth :  as  yet,  however,  they  might  be 
said  to  form  one  tree  —  a  ruin,  but  an  entire  ruin. 

"You  did  right  to  hold  fast  to  each  other,"  I  said:  as 
if  the  monster  splinters  were  living  things,  and  could  hear 
me.  "  I  think,  scathed  as  you  look,  and  charred  and 
scorched,  there  must  be  a  little  sense  of  life  in  you  yet; 
rising  out  of  that  adhesion  at  the  faithful  honest  roots : 
you  will  never  have  green  leaves  more  —  never  more  see 
birds  making  nests  and  singing  idyls  in  your  boughs ;  the 
time  of  pleasure  and  love  is  over  with  you ;  but  you  are  not 
desolate :  each  of  you  has  a  comrade  to  sympathize  with 
him  in  his  decay."  As  I  looked  up  at  them,  the  moon 
appeared  momentarily  in  that  part  of  the  sky  which  filled 
their  fissure ;  her  disk  was  blood-red  and  half  overcast ; 
she  seemed  to  throw  on  me  one  bewildered,  dreary  glance, 
and  buried  herself  again  instantly  in  the  deep  drift  of  cloud. 
The  wind  fell  for  a  second,  round  Thomfield ;  but  far  away 
over  wood  and  water,  poured  a  wild  melancholy  wail, 

*'  The  sap  could  Rov/  no  more  !  "  But  love,  deeper 
than  death,  stronger  than  strength,  righter  than  right, 
not  even  God's  lightning  can  destroy. 

Rochester  stills  her  fears  by  explaining  that  it  was 
Grace  Poole  she  saw,  and  bids  her  think  of  the  mor- 
row. "  Look  here  "  (he  lifted  up  the  curtain)  —  "  it 
is  a  lovely  night." 

It  was.  Half  heaven  was  pure  and  stainless  :  the  clouds, 
now  trooping  before  the  wind,  which  had  shifted  to  the  west, 
were  filing  off  eastward  in  long,  silvered  columns.  The 
moon  shone   peacefully. 

That  mirage  passes,  and  the  secret  is  at  last 
divulged. 

A  Christmas  frost  had  come  at  midsummer;  a  white 
December  storm  had  whirled  over  June;  ice  glazed  the 


62  Charlotte  Bronte 

ripe  apples,  drifts  crushed  the  blowing  roses ;  on  hay-field 
and  corn-field  lay  a  frozen  shroud ;  lanes  which  last  night 
blushed  full  of  flowers  to-day  were  pathless  with  untrodden 
snow ;  and  the  woods,  which  twelve  hours  since  waved  leafy 
and  fragrant  as  groves  between  the  tropics,  now  spread 
waste,  wild,  and  white  as  pine  forests  in  wintry  Norway. 
My  hopes  were  all  dead-struck  with  a  subtle  doom,  such  as 
in  one  night  fell  on  all  the  firstborn  in  the  land  of  Egypt. 
I  looked  on  my  cherished  wishes,  yesterday  so  blooming 
and  glowing ;  they  lay  stark,  still,  livid  corpses  that  could 
never  revive. 

Thus  is  the  ardent  expectancy  of  bridehood  turned 
for  Jane  Eyre  into  the  bitter-cold  desolation  of  disap- 
pointment ;  and  how  subtle  the  elemental  feeling  by 
which  wintry  nature  is  transmuted,  through  wither- 
ing descending  scales,  into  the  conditions  of  her  life! 
It  is  not  a  mere  likeness  between  the  blight  of  winter 
and  the  death  of  hope  :  what  chills  her  to  the  marrow 
is  that  her  faith  and  confidence  in  her  lover  are  de- 
stroyed,— that  "the  attitude  of  stainless  truth  was  gone 
from  his  idea,"  the  rich  full  flower  of  his  manhood 
had  perished  fruitless.  "  Signs,"  she  says,  "  for  aught 
we  know,  may  be  but  the  sympathies  of  Nature  with 
man." 

II 

The  true  nature-lover  is  the  true  nature-sympathizer. 
There  is  complete  reciprocity  between  what  Nature 
gives  to  him  and  what  he  to  her.  There  is  not  neces- 
sarily a  complete  comprehension,  but  there  is  that 
highest  form  of  faith,  —  a  complete  acceptance  even 
of  the  incomprehensible.  Such  faith  partakes  too 
largely  of  reverence  to  allow  fear  to  enter  its  despoil- 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         63 

ing  wedge ;  for  this  attitude  towards  nature  under- 
stands spiritually  what  it  cannot  comprehend  by  reason, 
and  the  product  is  awe.  The  "  most  natural  "  natures 
have  it ;  and  wherever  there  is  any  spiritual  possession 
of  a  man,  there  may  it  be  found,  though  the  mind  be 
also  possessed  of  shifting  quirks.  Charlotte  Bronte 
had  no  love  for  the  Jesuits,  but  she  is  candid  enough 
to  include  the  "  good  father  "  who  had  her  in  spiritual 
tow  with  herself  in  her  freedom  from  fright  at  the 
awful  storm  which  overtook  them  in  the  house  of 
Mme.  Walravens.  He  had  some  grandeur  in  him; 
he  had  a  simple  faith  in  an  elementary  God  back  of 
his  theological  complexities,  and  that  simplicity  saved 
him  from  vulgar  fear.  In  that  presence,  the  socially 
timid  Miss  Bronte  had  none,  either.  For  Lucy  says; 
"  I,  too,  was  awe-struck.  Being,  however,  under  no 
pressure  of  slavish  terror,  my  thoughts  and  observa- 
tions were  free."  Of  course.  That  is  a  part  of  her 
spiritual  glory,  and  which  she  shares  with  others  of 
lesser  fame,  but  of  similar  attitudes. 

Only,  she  goes  farther  into  nature  than  others :  she 
goes  farther  into  it,  without  consciously  pursuing  it. 
She  is  not  striving  for  effect  by  a  ceremoniously  evident 
attachment ;  and  she  would,  without  doubt,  if  living 
now,  disclaim  alliance  with  the  class  of  present  writers 
which  takes  objective  delight  in  the  delineating  of 
scenery.  I  have  said  that  atmosphere  possessed  her, 
and  I  have  tried  to  demonstrate  how  it  entered  into 
her  work.  It  was  of  the  fibres  of  her  brain,  which,  of 
necessity,  wrapped  the  brain's  concept  with  its  texture. 
Her  use  of  nature  is  more  than  natural ;  it  is  inevita- 
ble. 

In  dealing  with  Charlotte  Bronte,  we  are  dealing 
with  spirit  as  opposed  to  flesh.    She  does  not  divorce 


64  Charlotte  Bronte 

the  two  in  the  old  scholastic  way ;  there  is  no  theo- 
logical enmity  between  them;  she  suffered,  on  the 
contrary,  from  their  close  alliance.  But  she  was 
touched,  almost  exclusively,  on  the  spiritual  side. 
Pure  imagination  ruled  her.  More  than  any  other 
author,  I  believe,  she  exemplifies  the  idea  of  the  met- 
aphysicians in  their  term  "  productive  imagination,  " 
—  "  that  faculty  by  which  the  parts  of  the  intuitions 
of  space  and  time  are  combined  into  continua."  It  is 
untutored,  untamed,  pure.  The  three  sketches  which 
Jane  Eyre  produces  from  her  portfolio  at  Rochester's 
request  are,  I  submit,  the  three  finest  examples  in 
any  one  book  of  this  spiritual  power. 

The  first  represented  clouds  low  and  livid,  rolling  over  a 
swollen  sea :  all  the  distance  was  in  eclipse ;  so,  too,  was 
the  foreground ;  or  rather,  the  nearest  billows,  for  there  was 
no  land.  One  gleam  of  light  lifted  into  relief  a  half-sub- 
merged mast,  on  which  sat  a  cormorant,  dark  and  large, 
with  wings  flecked  with  foam  ;  its  beak  held  a  gold  bracelet, 
set  with  gems,  that  I  had  touched  with  as  brilliant  tints  as 
my  palette  could  yield,  and  as  glittering  distinctness  as  my 
pencil  could  impart.  Sinking  below  the  bird  and  mast,  a 
drowned  corpse  glanced  through  the  green  water ;  a  fair 
arm  was  the  only  limb  clearly  visible,  whence  the  bracelet 
had  been  washed  and  torn. 

The  second  picture  contained  for  foreground  only  the  dim 
peak  of  a  hill,  with  grass  and  some  leaves  slanting  as  if  by  a 
breeze.  Beyond  and  above  spread  an  expanse  of  sky,  dark 
blue  as  at  twilight :  rising  into  the  sky  was  a  woman's  shape 
to  the  bust,  portrayed  in  tints  as  dusk  and  soft  as  I  could 
combine.  The  dim  forehead  was  crowned  with  a  star  :  the 
lineaments  below  were  seen  as  through  the  suffusion  of 
vapour ;  the  eyes  shone  dark  and  wild ;  the  hair  streamed 
shadowy,  like  a  beamless  cloud  torn  by  storm  or  by  electric 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         65 

travail.  On  the  neck  lay  a  pale  reflection  like  moonlight ; 
the  same  faint  lustre  touched  the  train  of  thin  clouds  from 
which  rose  and  bowed  the  vision  of  the  Evening  Star. 

The  third  showed  the  pinnacle  of  an  iceberg  piercing  a 
polar  winter  sky :  a  muster  of  northern  lights  reared  their 
dim  lances,  close  serried,  along  the  horizon.  Throwing 
these  into  distance,  rose,  in  the  foreground,  a  head,  —  a 
colossal  head,  incUned  towards  the  iceberg,  and  resting 
against  it.  Two  thin  hands,  joined  under  the  forehead,  and 
supporting  it,  drew  up  before  the  lower  features  a  sable  veil ; 
a  brow  quite  bloodless,  white  as  bone,  and  an  eye  hollow 
and  fixed,  blank  of  meaning  but  for  the  glassiness  of  despair, 
alone  were  visible.  Above  the  temples,  amidst  wreathed 
turban  folds  of  black  drapery,  vague  in  its  character  and  con- 
sistency as  cloud,  gleamed  a  ring  of  white  flame,  gemmed 
with  sparkles  of  a  more  lurid  tinge.  This  pale  crescent  was 
"  the  likeness  of  a  Kingly  Crown ;  "  what  it  diademed  was 
"  the  shape  which  shape  had  none." 

On  that  magnificent  night  of  the  f6te,  when  Mme. 
Beck  endeavored,  through  the  operation  of  a  sedative, 
to  hold  her  English  teacher  in  subjection,  the  drug 
merely  excited  her. 

Instead  of  stupor  came  excitement.  I  became  alive  to 
new  thought  —  to  reverie  peculiar  in  coloring.  A  gathering 
call  ran  among  the  faculties,  their  bugles  sang,  their  trumpets 
rang  an  untimely  summons.  Imagination  was  roused  from 
her  rest,  and  she  came  forth  impetuous  and  venturous.  With 
scorn  she  looked  on  Matter,  her  mate.  "  Rise  !  "  she  said. 
"  Sluggard  !  this  night  I  will  have  my  will ;  nor  shalt  thou 
prevail." 

"  Look  forth  and  view  the  night !  "  was  her  cry,  and  when 
I  lifted  the  heavy  blind  from  the  casement  close  at  hand  — 
with  her  own  royal  gesture,  she  showed  me  a  moon  supreme, 
in  an  element  deep  and  splendid. 

5 


66  Charlotte  Bronte 

To  my  gasping  senses  she  made  the  gUmmering  gloom,  the 
narrow  limits,  the  oppressive  heat  of  the  dormitory,  intoler- 
able. She  lured  me  to  leave  this  den  and  follow  her  forth 
into  dew,  coolness,  and  glory. 

She  recalls  having  seen  a  gap  in  the  paling  of  the 
park  fence.  She  determines  that  she  will  try  thus  to 
steal  into  this  deserted  park,  where  she  will  be  abso- 
lutely alone  at  such  an  hour.  "  The  whole  park 
would  be  mine,  the  moonlight,  midnight  park  ! " 
She  does  not  find  it  deserted,  as  we  know;  but  after 
all  the  fever  and  the  glamour  of  the  f^te  had  passed, 
as  Lucy  seeks  again  the  "  dim  lower  quarter,"  she 
finds  the  moon  of  her  search. 

Dim  I  should  not  say,  for  the  beauty  of  moonlight,  for- 
gotten in  the  park,  here  once  more  flowed  in  upon  percep- 
tion. High  she  rode,  and  calm  and  stainlessly  she  shone. 
The  music  and  the  mirth  of  the  fete,  the  fire  and  bright 
hues  of  those  lamps  had  outdone  and  outshone  her  for  an 
hour,  but  now,  again,  her  glory  and  her  silence  triumphed. 
The  rival  lamps  were  dying :  she  held  her  course  like  a 
white  fate.  Drum,  trumpet,  bugle,  had  uttered  their  clangor 
and  were  forgotten :  with  pencil-ray  she  wrote  on  heaven 
and  earth  records  for  archives  everlasting.  She  and  those 
stars  seemed  to  me  at  once  the  types  and  witnesses  of  truth 
all  regnant.  The  night-sky  lit  her  reign :  like  its  slow- 
wheeling  progress,  advanced  her  victory,  —  that  onward 
movement  which  has  been,  and  is,  and  will  be  from  eter- 
nity to  eternity. 

Paul  Emmanuel,  lingering  in  the  garden,  looks 
"  at  the  moon,  at  the  gray  cathedral  over  the  re- 
moter spires  and  house  roofs  fading  into  a  blue  sea 
of  night-mist.  He  tasted  the  sweet  breath  of  dusk, 
and  noted  the  folded  bloom  of  the  garden."    Who 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         tj 

else  has  so  delicately  expressed  that  exquisite  sense  of 
perfumed  eventide,  —  that  unnamable  sacred-human 
presence  of  the  haunting  vesper  spirit? 

Pier  finest  similes  are  based  on  nature.  Saint  Pierre's 
power  over  her  unruly  pupils  held  "  them  in  check  as 
a  breezeless  frost-air  might  still  a  brawling  stream." 
The  fair  visitors  at  Thornfield-Hall  descend  the  stair- 
case "  almost  as  noiselessly  as  a  bright  mist  rolls 
down  a  hill,"  These  fine  ladies  "  all  had  a  sweeping 
ampHtude  of  array  that  seemed  to  magnify  their  per- 
sons as  a  mist  magnifies  the  moon,"  It  is  not  every 
day  that  one  may  read  in  one  book  two  such  similes 
based  on  the  effects  of  mist.  When  the  Orders  in 
Council  were  repealed,  "  Liverpool  started  and 
snorted  like  a  river-horse  roused  amongst  his  reeds 
by  thunder," 

So,  too,  the  adjectives  which  come  at  her  nod  have 
the  fine  fitness  which  nature  demands,  —  the  fitness 
which  makes  one  cry  out,  "  None  other  would  have 
done  at  all !  "  The  rain  falls  "  heavy,  prone,  and 
broad,"  The  beck  sends  a  "  raving"  sound  through 
the  air.  She  has  twice  put  into  living  words  the 
swelling  emotions  all  travellers  open  to  its  influ- 
ence must  feel  who  stand  below  the  great  dome  of 
St.  Paul's  in  the  solemn  night  time: 

It,  too,  is  dear  to  my  soul ;  for  there,  as  I  lay  in  quiet 
and  darkness,  I  first  heard  the  great  bell  of  St,  Paul's  tell- 
ing London  it  was  midnight ;  and  well  do  I  recall  the  deep 
deliberate  tones,  so  full  charged  with  colossal  phlegm  and 
force. 

I  had  just  extinguished  my  candle  and  Iain  down,  when 
a  deep,  low,  mighty  tone  swung  through  the  night.  At  first 
I  knew  it  not ;  but  it  was  uttered  twelve  times,  and  at  the 
twelfth  colossal  hum  and  trembling  knell,  I  said,  "  I  lie  in 


68  Charlotte  Bronte 

the  shadow  of  St.  Paul's."  .  .  .  Above  my  head,  above  the 
house-tops,  co-elevate  almost  with  the  clouds,  I  saw  a  sol- 
emn orbed  mass,  dark-blue  and  dim  —  The  Dome.  While 
I  looked  my  inner  self  moved ;  my  spirit  shook  its  always 
fettered  wings  half  loose ;  I  had  a  sudden  feeling  as  if  I, 
who  had  never  yet  truly  lived,  were  at  last  about  to  taste 
life ;  in  that  morning  my  soul  grew  as  fast  as  Jonah's 
gourd. 

This  grave  bass  glides  into  softest  treble  when  she 
writes,  with  equal  insight,  of  "sweet,  soft,  exalted'* 
sounds.     Oh,  carillons  of  Bruges ! 


Ill 

In  discussing  Charlotte,  one  must  speak  of  Emily 
also,  —  that  untamed  virgin  of  the  moors,  to  whom 
they  were  as  the  call  of  the  sea  to  the  mariner,  and 
as  strong  drink  to  the  drunkard.  Younger  in  years 
and  in  grace,  she  was  yet  the  elder  sister  in  her  atti- 
tude towards  nature,  as  paganism  is  older  than  Chris- 
tianity. With  her,  nature  was  the  thing  worshipped, 
not  the  milieu  through  which  worship  was  done.  It 
is  expressed  in  Catherine's  dream : 

"If  I  were  in  heaven,  Nelly,  I  should  be  extremely 
miserable." 

"  Because  you  are  not  fit  to  go  there,"  I  answered.  "  All 
sinners  would  be  miserable  in  heaven." 

"  But  it  is  not  for  that.  I  dreamt  once  that  I  was  there ; 
.  .  .  heaven  did  not  seem  to  be  my  home ;  and  I  broke 
my  heart  with  weeping  to  come  back  to  earth ;  and  the 
angels  were  so  angry  that  they  flung  me  out  into  the  middle 
of  the  heath  on  the  top  of  Wuthering  Heights,  where  I 
woke  sobbing  for  joy." 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         69 

I  shall  have  to  show,  in  the  next  section,  how  she 
was  like  Charlotte,  and  yet  greater  than  Charlotte,  in 
her  conception  of  love;  but  let  me  here  point  out, 
in  passing,  her  place,  along  with  her  less  terrible  sis- 
ter, among  the  great  nature  portrayers. 

Emily  Bronte  has  been  called  the  Sphinx  of  litera- 
ture. We  have  only  '  Wuthering  Heights  '  to  tell  us, 
in  a  mystery,  what  she  was,  —  that  and  a  handful  of 
poems,  Charlotte's  loving  testimony,  and  this  from 
•  Shirley ' : 

A  still,  deep,  inborn  delight  glows  in  her  young  veins; 
unmingled,  untroubled,  not  to  be  reached  or  ravished  by 
human  agency,  because  by  no  human  agency  bestowed : 
the  pure  gift  of  God  to  his  creature,  the  free  dower  of 
Nature  to  her  child.  This  joy  gives  her  experience  of  a 
genii-life.  Buoyant,  by  green  steps,  by  glad  hills,  all  ver- 
dure and  light,  she  reaches  a  station  scarcely  lower  than 
that  whence  angels  looked  down  on  the  dreamer  of  Beth-el, 
and  her  eye  seeks,  and  her  soul  possesses,  the  vision  of  life 
as  she  wishes  it.  No,  not  as  she  wishes  it :  she  has  not 
time  to  wish :  the  swift  glory  spreads  out,  sweeping  and 
kindling,  and  multiplies  its  splendors  faster  than  Thought 
can  effect  his  combinations,  faster  than  Aspiration  can  utter 
her  longings.  .  .  . 

If  Shirley  were  not  an  indolent,  a  reckless,  an  ignorant 
being,  she  would  take  a  pen  at  such  moments ;  or  at  least 
while  the  recollection  of  such  moments  was  yet  fresh  on 
her  spirit :  she  would  seize,  she  would  fix  the  apparition, 
tell  the  vision  revealed.  Had  she  a  little  more  of  the  organ 
of  acquisitiveness  in  her  head,  a  little  more  of  the  love  of 
property  in  her  nature,  she  would  take  a  good-sized  sheet 
of  paper  and  write  plainly  out,  in  her  own  queer  but  clear 
and  legible  hand,  the  story  that  has  been  narrated,  the  song 
that  has  been  sung  to  her,  and  thus  possess  what  she  was 


70  Charlotte  Bronte 

enabled  to  create.  But  indolent  she  is,  reckless  she  is,  and 
most  ignorant,  for  she  does  not  know  her  dreams  are  rare, 
her  feelings  peculiar :  she  does  not  know,  has  never  known, 
and  will  die  without  knowing,  the  full  value  of  that  spring 
whose  bright  fresh  bubbling  in  her  heart  keeps  it  green. 

And  as  Moore  soliloquizes  of  Shirley,  so  Charlotte 
of  Emily: 

.  .  .  her  deep  dark  eyes :  difficult  to  describe  what  I 
read  there  !  Pantheress  !  —  beautiful  forest-born  !  —  wily, 
tameless,  peerless  nature  !  She  gnaws  her  chain  :  I  see  the 
white  teeth  working  at  the  steel!  She  has  dreams  of  her 
wild  woods,  and  pinings  after  virgin  freedom.  .  .  Some 
hours  ago  she  passed  me,  coming  down  the  oak-staircase 
to  the  hall :  she  did  not  know  I  was  standing  in  the  twi- 
light, near  the  staircase  window,  looking  at  the  frost-bright 
constellations.  How  closely  she  glided  against  the  banisters  ! 
How  shyly  shone  her  large  eyes  upon  me  !  How  evanescent, 
fugitive,  fitful,  she  looked,  —  slim  and  swift  as  a  Northern 
Streamer  !  ...  In  her  white  evening  dress ;  with  her  long 
hair  flowing  full  and  wavy ;  with  her  noiseless  step,  her  pale 
cheek,  her  eye  full  of  night  and  lightning,  she  looked,  I 
thought,  spirit-like,  —  a  thing  made  of  an  element,  —  the 
child  of  a  breeze  and  a  flame,  —  the  daughter  of  ray  and 
raindrop,  —  a  thing  never  to  be  overtaken,  arrested,  fixed. 

The  vigor  of  her  feeling  may  be  pretty  accurately 
described  in  the  younger  Catherine's  breezy  idea  of 
"  heaven's  happiness,"  as  opposed  to  Linton's : 

He  said  the  pleasantest  manner  of  spending  a  hot  July 
day  was  lying  from  morning  till  evening  on  a  bank  of  heath 
in  the  middle  of  the  moors,  with  the  bees  humming  dreamily 
about  among  the  bloom,  arid  the  larks  singing  high  up  over- 
head, and  the  blue  sky  and  bright  sun  shining  steadily  and 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         71 

cloudlessly.  That  was  his  most  perfect  idea  of  heaven's 
happiness  :  mine  was  rocking  in  a  rustling  green  tree,  with 
a  west  wind  blowing,  and  bright  white  clouds  flitting  rapidly 
above;  and  not  only  larks,  but  throstles,  and  blackbirds, 
and  linnets,  and  cuckoos  pouring  out  music  on  every  side, 
and  the  moors  seen  at  a  distance,  broken  into  cool  dusky 
dells;  but  close  by  great  swells  of  long  grass  undulating 
in  waves  to  the  breeze;  and  woods  and  sounding  water, 
and  the  whole  world  awake  and  wild  with  joy.  He  wanted 
all  to  lie  in  an  ecstacy  of  peace ;  I  wanted  all  to  sparkle 
and  dance  in  a  glorious  jubilee.  I  said  his  heaven  would 
be  only  half  alive ;  and  he  said  mine  would  be  drunk ;  I 
said  I  should  fall  asleep  in  his ;  and  he  said  he  could  not 
breathe  in  mine.  .  .  . 

We  have  seen  how  picturesquely  Charlotte  im- 
presses the  word  "  beamless  "  into  use.  So  Emily: 
*'  all  that  remained  of  day  was  a  beamless  amber  light 
along  the  west."  The  gaunt  thorns  around  Wuther- 
ing  Heights  "  stretch  their  limbs  one  way,  as  if  craving 
alms  of  the  sun."  There  is  a  picture  which  dwells  in 
the  memory  for  all  time.  And  she  shares  with  Char- 
lotte her  power  to  select  the  one  word,  of  all  the 
words  she  might  have  selected,  which  hits  conscious- 
ness as  a  blow  hits  the  face,  nailing  the  thought  into 
the  attention  by  an  almost  physical  force.  In  the 
description  of  Vashti,  Charlotte  contrasts  the  heavy, 
sensual  '  Cleopatra '  she  has  previously  been  criticis- 
ing with  the  vivid  living  force  of  the  wonderful 
actress :  "  Place  now  the  Cleopatra  or  any  other 
slug  before  her  as  an  obstacle,  and  see  her  cut 
through  the  pulpy  mass,  as  the  scimitar  of  Saladin 
clave  the  down  cushion."  Thus,  Emily  speaks  of  the 
"  smiting  beauty "  of  a  face.  Her  eye  had  pierced 
the  dark  veil  which  hangs  before  the  penetralia  of 


72  Charlotte  Bronte 

that  nether  world  which  the  Furies  call  their  home, 
and  in  one  burning  sentence  she  gives  us  a  whirling 
glance  thereat:  "the  clouded  windows  of  hell  flashed 
a  moment  towards  me." 

Like  Emily,  Charlotte  is  never  afraid  of  Nature, 
and  does  not  realize  her  terrors. 

Strong  and  horizontal  thundered  the  current  of  the  wind 
from  northwest  to  southeast ;  it  brought  rain  like  spray,  and 
sometimes  a  sharp  hail  like  shot.  ...  I  bent  my  head  to 
meet  it,  but  it  beat  me  back.  My  heart  did  not  fail  me  at 
all  in  this  conflict.  I  only  wished  that  I  had  wings,  and 
could  ascend  the  gale,  spread  and  repose  my  pinions  on  its 
strength,  career  in  its  course,  sweep  where  it  swept. 

One  night  a  thunder  storm  broke ;  a  sort  of  hurricane 
shook  us  in  our  beds :  the  Catholics  rose  in  panic  and 
prayed  to  their  saints.  As  for  me,  the  tempest  took  hold 
of  me  with  tyranny :  I  was  roughly  roused  and  obliged  to 
live.  I  got  up  and  dressed  myself,  and  creeping  outside 
the  casement  close  to  my  bed,  sat  on  its  ledge,  with  my  feet 
on  the  roof  of  a  lower  adjoining  building.  It  was  wet,  it 
was  wild,  it  was  pitch-dark.  Within  the  dormitory,  they 
gathered  round  the  night-lamp  in  consternation,  praying 
loud.  I  could  not  go  in :  too  resistless  was  the  delight  of 
staying  with  the  wild  hour,  black  and  full  of  thunder,  pealing 
out  such  an  ode  as  language  never  delivered  to  man  —  too 
terribly  glorious  the  spectacle  of  clouds,  split  and  pierced  by 
white  Winding  bolts. 

Who  can  ever  forget  Shirley's  sublime  apostrophe 
which  was  doubtless  a  reflection  of  Emily's  unspoken 
thought? 

"  Nature  is  now  at  her  evening  prayers  :  she  is  kneeling 
before  those  red  hills.     I  see  her  prostrate  on  the  great 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         73 

steps  of  her  altar,  praying  for  a  fair  night  for  mariners  at  sea, 
for  travellers  in  deserts,  for  lambs  on  moors,  and  unfledged 
birds  in  woods.  Caroline,  I  see  her !  and  I  will  tell  you 
what  she  is  like :  she  is  like  what  Eve  was  when  she  and 
Adam  stood  alone  on  earth." 

"  And  that  is  not  Milton's  Eve,  Shirley." 

"  Milton's  Eve  !  Milton's  Eve  !  I  repeat.  No,  by  the 
pure  Mother  of  God,  she  is  not !  .  .  .  He  saw  heaven  :  he 
looked  down  on  hell.  He  saw  Satan,  and  Sin  his  daughter, 
and  Death  their  horrible  offspring.  Angels  serried  before 
him  their  battalions :  the  long  lines  of  adamantine  shields 
flashed  back  on  his  blind  eye-balls  the  unutterable  splendor 
of  heaven.  Devils  gathered  their  legions  in  his  sight :  their 
dim,  discrowned,  and  tarnished  armies  passed  rank  and  file 
before  him.  Milton  tried  to  see  the  first  woman ;  but, 
Gary,  he  saw  her  not." 

"  You  are  bold  to  say  so,  Shirley." 

"  Not  more  bold  than  faithful.  It  was  his  cook  that  he 
saw ;  or  it  was  Mrs.  Gill,  as  I  have  seen  her,  making  cus- 
tards in  the  heat  of  summer,  in  the  cool  dairy,  with  rose 
trees  and  nasturtiums  about  the  latticed  window,  preparing 
a  cold  collation  for  the  Rectors.  ...  I  would  beg  to  re- 
mind him  that  the  first  men  of  the  earth  were  Titans,  and 
that  Eve  was  their  mother :  from  her  sprang  Saturn,  Hy- 
perion, Oceanus ;  she  bore  Prometheus  —  " 

"Pagan  that  you  are  !  what  does  that  signify?  " 

"I  say  there  were  giants  on  the  earth  in  those  days: 
giants  that  strove  to  scale  heaven.  The  first  woman's  breast 
that  heaved  with  life  on  this  world  yielded  the  daring  which 
could  contend  with  Omnipotence  :  the  strength  which  could 
bear  a  thousand  years  of  bondage,  —  the  vitality  which  could 
feed  that  vulture  death  through  uncounted  ages,  —  the  un- 
exhausted life  and  uncorrupted  excellence,  sisters  to  immor- 
tality, which,  after  millenniums  of  crimes,  struggles,  and  woes, 
could  conceive  and  bring  forth  a  Messiah.  The  first  woman 
was  heaven- born :  vast  was  the  heart  whence  gushed  the 


74  Charlotte  Bronte 

well-spring  of  the  blood  of  nations ;  and  grand  the  unde- 
generate  head  where  rested  the  consort-crown  of  creation. 

"  I  saw  —  I  now  see  —  a  woman-Titan  :  her  robe  of 
blue  air  spreads  to  the  outskirts  of  the  heath,  where  yonder 
flock  is  grazing ;  a  veil  white  as  an  avalanche  sweeps  from 
her  head  to  her  feet,  and  arabesques  of  lightning  flame  on 
its  borders.  Under  her  breast  I  see  her  zone,  purple  like 
that  horizon :  through  its  blush  shines  the  star  of  evening. 
Her  steady  eyes  I  cannot  picture  ;  they  are  clear — they  are 
deep  as  lakes  —  they  are  lifted  and  full  of  worship  —  they 
tremble  with  the  softness  of  love  and  the  lustre  of  prayer. 
Her  forehead  has  the  expanse  of  a  cloud,  and  is  paler  than 
the  early  moon,  risen  long  before  dark  gathers  :  she  reclines 
her  bosom  on  the  ridge  of  Stilbro'  Moor ;  her  mighty  hands 
are  joined  beneath  it.  So  kneeling,  face  to  face,  she 
speaks  with  God.  That  Eve  is  Jehovah's  daughter,  as  Adam 
was  his  son." 

^    *'  She  is  very  vague  and  visionary  !     Come,  Shirley,  we 
ought  to  go  into  church." 

"  Caroline,  I  will  not :  I  will  stay  out  here  with  my 
mother.  Eve,  in  these  days  called  Nature.  I  love  her — un- 
dying, mighty  being  !  Heaven  may  have  faded  from  her 
brow  when  she  fell  in  paradise ;  but  all  that  is  glorious  on 
earth  shines  there  still.  She  is  taking  me  to  her  bosom,  and 
showing  me  her  heart.  Hush,  Caroline  !  you  will  see  her 
and  feel  as  I  do,  if  we  are  both  silent." 

"  It  is  well  that  the  true  poet,"  says  Miss  Bronte, 
"  can  measure  the  whole  stature  of  those  who  look 
down  on  him,  and  correctly  ascertain  the  weight  and 
value  of  the  pursuits  they  disdain  him  for  not  having 
followed.  It  is  happy  that  he  can  have  his  own  bliss, 
his  own  society  with  his  great  friend  and  goddess,  Na- 
ture, quite  independent  of  those  who  find  little  pleasure 
in  him,  and  in  whom  he  finds  no  pleasure  at  all." 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         y^ 

Nature  is  her  "  great  friend "  also,  but  more  of  a 
divine  priestess  than  a  "  goddess,"  as  she  was  with 
Emily.  UnUke  Emily,  she  looks  through  nature,  up 
to  nature's  God ;  and  if  in  the  rush  of  her  emotion, 
she  at  times  confuses  the  glory  and  its  reflection,  it  is 
as  if  one  might,  in  rapt  moments,  fail  to  distinguish 
the  image  from  the  imaged.  Nature  was  to  her,  not 
so  much  a  sacred  book  to  be  unsealed  only  with 
mystic  rites,  as  it  was  a  solemn  running  commentary 
upon  a  passionately  conceived,  dimly  understood, 
and  bravely  borne  existence.  Lt/e  was  the  mystery, 
Nature  the  priest,  she  the  pale  but  ready  victim. 
Hence  the  eloquence  of  her  descriptions.  The  priest- 
like Nature  stands  between  her  and  life,  and  pleads 
for  her  to  Life.  Nature  is  not  the  mystery  —  that  lies 
beyond ;  but  Nature  expounds  and  exemplifies.  That 
is  why  we  do  not  think  of  rhetoric  when  we  think  of 
all  this  passionate  writing.  It  is  rhetoric  ;  but,  as  when 
in  the  glow  of  a  noble  liturgy,  we  are  not  conscious 
of  it. 

There  is,  in  the  place  of  world-knowledge,  what  is 
so  much  better,  earth-knowledge.  Happy  the  union  ! 
For  old  Nature  soothes  the  dumb  ague  of  despair 
into  something  resembling  calm. 

Yonder  sky  was  sealed :  the  solemn  stars  shone  alien 
and  remote ;  .  .  .  she  felt  as  if  Something  far  round  drew 
nigher.  She  heard  as  if  Silence  spoke.  There  was  no  lan- 
guage, no  word,  only  a  tone.  Again,  a  fine,  full,  lofty 
tone,  a  deep  soft  sound,  like  a  storm  whispering,  made 
twilight  undulate. 

That  Presence,  invisible  but  mighty,  gathered  her  in  like 
a  lamb  to  the  fold  j  that  voice,  soft  but  all-pervading, 
vibrated  through  her  heart  like  music.     Her  eye  received 


76  Charlotte  Bronte 

no  image ;  and  yet  a  sense  visited  her  vision  and  her  brain 
as  of  the  serenity  of  stainless  air,  the  power  of  sovereign 
seas,  the  majesty  of  marching  stars,  the  energy  of  colliding 
elements,  the  rooted  endurance  of  hills  wide-based,  and 
above  all,  as  of  the  lustre  of  heroic  beauty  rushing  victo- 
rious on  the  night,  vanquishing  its  shadows  like  a  diviner  sun. 

Twilight  was  falling,  and  I  deemed  its  influence  pitiful ; 
from  the  lattice  I  saw  coming  night  clouds  trailing  low  like 
banners  drooping. 

and  that  matchless  passage, 

The  moon  reigns  glorious,  glad  of  the  gale,  —  as  glad  as 
if  she  gave  herself  to  his  fierce  caress  with  love, 

which  causes  Mr.  Swinburne  to  exclaim,  "  The  words 
have  in  them  the  very  breath  and  magic,  and  riotous 
radiance,  the  utter  rapture  and  passion  and  splendor 
of  the  high  sonorous  night."  "  It  is,"  he  declares, 
"  the  first  and  last  absolute  and  sufficient  and  trium- 
phant word  ever  to  be  said  on  the  subject."  Surely, 
surely,  if  ever  the  stigmata  of  inspiration  were 
stamped  with  ineffaceable  imprint  on  any  work,  in 
hers  may  the  miraculous  marks  be  found. 


IV 

There  is  no  painter  of  scenery,  no  painter  of 
atmosphere,  like  her. 

Dawn  was  just  beginning  to  steal  on  night,  to  penetrate 
with  a  pale  ray  its  brown  obscurity,  and  give  a  demi-trans- 
lucence  to  its  opaque  shadows ;  ...  no  color  tinged  the 
east,  no  flush  warmed  it.     To  see  what  a  heavy  lid  day 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         jj 

slowly  lifted,  what  a  wan  glance  she  flung  along  the  hills, 
you  would  have  thought  the  sun's  fire  quenched  in  last 
night's  floods ;  .  .  .  a  raw  wind  stirred  the  mass  of  night- 
cloud,  and  showed,  as  it  slowly  rose  —  leaving  a  colorless, 
silver-gleaming  ring  all  round  the  horizon  —  not  blue  sky, 
but  a  stratum  of  paler  vapor  beyond. 

But  it  is  remarkable  that  this  descriptive  power  is 
yoked  with  her  studies  of  character ;  her  finest  pas- 
sages inevitably  lead  up  to  some  effect  upon  the 
mind.  The  scenery  is  a  parable,  a  miracle ;  a  human 
life  is  the  thing  signified,  the  thing  wrought  upon. 
As  William  Crimsworth  walks  home  from  Frances 
Henri's  abode,  his  affections  stirred,  and  his  ambi- 
tions aroused  to  meet  them,  he  feels  "  the  West  be- 
hind him ;  "  and  before  him  rose  "  the  arch  of  an 
evening  rainbow."  Brain,  not  only  eye,  absorbed  the 
scene,  for  that  night  in  a  dream  it  was  reproduced. 

I  stood,  methought,  upon  a  terrace ;  I  leaned  over  a 
parapeted  wall ;  there  was  space  below  me,  depth  I  could 
not  fathom,  but  hearing  an  endless  dash  of  waves,  I  be- 
lieved it  to  be  the  sea ;  sea  spread  to  the  horizon ;  sea  of 
changeful  green  and  intense  blue.  All  was  soft  in  the  dis- 
tance ;  all  vapor-veiled.  A  spark  of  gold  glistened  on  the 
line  between  water  and  air,  floated  up,  approached,  en- 
larged, changed ;  the  object  hung  midway  between  heaven 
and  earth,  under  the  arch  of  the  rainbow ;  the  soft  but  dusk 
clouds  diffused  behind.  It  hovered  as  on  wings ;  pearly, 
fleecy,  gleaming  air  streamed  like  raiment  round  it ;  light, 
tinted  with  carnation,  colored  what  seemed  face  and  limbs ; 
a  large  star  shone  with  still  lustre  on  an  angel's  forehead ; 
an  upraised  arm  and  hand,  glancing  like  a  ray,  pointed  to 
the  bow  overhead,  and  a  voice  in  my  heart  whispered,  — 
Hope  smiles  on  Effort. 


78  Charlotte  Bronte 

I  have  referred  to  the  passage  where  Yorke  con- 
fesses the  meanness  of  his  attitude  towards  Mary 
Cave.     As  he  is  about  to  utter  the  words,  — 

"  The  moon  is  up,"  was  his  first  not  quite  relevant  re- 
mark, pointing  with  his  whip  across  the  moor.  "  There  she 
is,  riding  into  the  haze,  staring  at  us  wi'  a  strange  red  glower. 
She  is  no  more  silver  than  old  Helstone's  brow  is  ivory. 
What  does  she  mean  by  leaning  her  cheek  on  Rushedge  i* 
that  way,  and  looking  at  us  wi'  a  scowl  and  a  menace?  " 

Why  does  the  moon  scowl  at  Yorke?  Why  is  not 
her  light  silvery  for  him?  Because  of  his  guilty  con- 
science. She  sets  her  pure  light  against  his  turgid 
wilfulness,  and  its  purity  is  tinged  with  the  defiling 
color  of  his  sin.  Had  he  been  spotless,  she  would 
have  had  no  menace  in  her  glow.  He  is  arrested  like 
Saul  of  Tarsus.  She  stands  a  divine  advocate  for  the 
innocence  he  has  lost. 

We  thus  see  that  nature  does  not  exist  for  her  by 
and  for  itself,  but  as  mysteriously  wrapped  about 
human  destiny,  and  as  in  sympathy  with  human 
character.  Human  character  she  undoubtedly  con- 
sidered her  first  and  foremost  study,  and  all  her 
glowing  scenic  descriptions  bear  a  close  approxima- 
tion to  such  a  study.  She  was,  indeed,  a  keen  ana- 
lyzer of  character;  and  although  at  times,  through 
her  ignorance  of  the  world,  too  prim  and  too  severe, 
the  mistakes  she  makes  are  on  the  safe  side  of  over- 
conscientiousness.  Take  her  study  of  this  same  Yorke. 
Let  us  put  his  contradictions  into  parallels : 

Sometimes  spoke  broad  York-  Sometimes  pure  English. 

shire. 

Blunt  and  rough.  Polite  and  affable. 

Without  ideality.  Yet  a  fine  ear  for  music. 


Her  Attitude  towards  Nature         79 

Indocile,  scornful,  sarcastic.         Unusual   taste,  a   connoisseur 

of   art,  a  travelled   man,  a 
scholar,  and  a  gentleman. 
Grossly  intolerant  against  lords     Excellent  general  doctrines  of 

and  parsons.  mutual  toleration. 

His    religious    belief    without     Not  irreligious, 
awe,     imagination,     tender- 
ness. 
Family  pride.  Professor  of  "  equality." 

Haughty  as  Beelzebub  to  those     Very  kind  to  all  beneath  him. 

above  him. 
Impatient  of  imbecility.  Honorable,    capable,    and   re- 

spected. 


THE  KEY. 

He  was  a  Yorkshire  gentleman.  He  had  no  ven- 
eration, "  a  great  want,  .  .  .  which  throws  a  man 
wrong  on  every  point  where  veneration  is  required." 
He  was  without  the  organ  of  comparison,  "  a  defi- 
ciency which  strips  a  man  of  sympathy."  "  He  had 
little  of  the  organs  of  benevolence  and  ideality, 
which  took  the  glory  and  softness  from  his  nature." 
Every  contradiction  in  this  highly  original  character 
(are  not  all  original  characters  contradictory?)  is 
thus  explained,  and  the  picture  is  as  clear-cut  as  the 
Vienna  onyx. 

As  for  me,  whenever  a  purple  sunset  streaks  the 
West,  whenever  the  moon  rises  "  in  an  element  deep 
and  splendid,"  whenever  the  soul  swells  with  killing 
pains  on  silent  moon-filled  nights,  I  think  of  Char- 
lotte Bronte.  I  think  of  the  pang  of  all  the  world,  the 
unutterable  cries,  the  low  moans,  the  stifled  sobs, 
which  well  up  into  the  pitying  skies,  and  shine  there 
on  the  stricken  earth.     Whenever  I  lie  awake  in  the 


8o  Charlotte  Bronte 

night  watches  listening  to  the  wind  ["  Peace,  peace, 
Banshee,  keening  at  every  window!  "],  I  think  of  a 
pure  upHfted  face  at  a  parsonage  lattice  in  a  York- 
shire wilderness :  God  and  the  awful  stars  above,  the 
graves  of  buried  loves  beneath,  and  all  about  the 
ineffable  haunting  witchery  of  the  loud-whispering 
moors. 


C  — HER  PASSION 


It  is  a  significant  commentary  upon  numan  nature 
that  the  word  passion  should  have  come  to  have  a 
meaning  directly  opposite  to  its  original  import, 
because  the  secondary  definitions  indicate  the  lapses 
of  that  nature  from  the  ideal  equipoise  of  character. 
The  word  means,  in  its  simplicity,  passivity,  as  op- 
posed to  activity,  —  hence,  susceptibility,  receptivity ; 
which  implies,  when  the  active  force  at  work  is  pain- 
ful, suffering.  As  the  greatest  suffering  known  in 
history,  resulting  from  the  most  acute  susceptibility, 
made  the  most  intense  by  the  completest  passivity, 
the  agony  of  Christ  preceding  His  death  upon  the 
cross  is,  with  an  immediately  recognized  perfect  ap- 
propriateness, termed  for  all  time  THE  PASSION. 
The  secondary  meanings  attached  to  the  word  as 
now  generally  used  relate,  as  do  most  secondary 
meanings,  to  a  state  of  mind  proceeding  from  such 
susceptibility  as  the  original  meaning  sets  forth,  viz., 
vehement  emotion,  evidenced  by  violent  displays  of 
feeling.  That  is  to  say,  from  a  perfect  passivity,  as 
in  the  ideal  historical  case,  the  word  flies  to  the 
opposite  meaning  of  extreme  activity,  because  the 
imperfections  of  human  nature  are  so  rarely  under 
the  control  of  the  rational  faculties  when  their  springs 
are  disturbed. 

6 


82  Charlotte  Bronte 

All  true  passion,  then,  is  simple  suffering,  due  to 
extreme  susceptibility,  and  is  opposed  by  a  whole 
circumference  to  the  idea  of  action.  As  such  passion 
approximates  to  the  ideal  passion,  it  is  perforce 
noble;  differing  from  that  in  the  degree  of  its  nobil- 
ity by  the  difference  between  the  nobly  human,  and 
yet  because  human,  imperfect,  and  the  inevitably 
divine. 

I  claim  for  Charlotte  Bronte  a  place  in  this  pan- 
theon. She  suffered  and  was  still,  except  for  her 
books  not  meant  to  be  discovered  as  hers,  and 
through  which  we  feel  her  shaken  soul.  It  was  not 
a  pleadingyi?;'  passion,  as  the  critics  vainly  imagined, 
but  the  pleading  of  passion.  "  My  God,  my  God, 
why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me?"  Let  those  who  im- 
pugn Charlotte  Bronte  for  crying  out  in  her  pain 
solve  that  mystery  of  the  Cross. 

II 

The  attempt  to  prove  from  internal  and  external 
evidence  that  the  sadness  of  '  Villette  '  is  traceable  to 
an  unhappy  love  experience  is,  in  my  judgment, 
futile  and  inexcusable.  The  actual  external  is  twisted, 
in  order  to  fit  it  to  the  supposed  internal,  evidence ; 
which  is  a  fatal  course  in  the  hunt  for  truth. 

"  I  returned  to  Brussels  after  aunt's  death,  against 
my  conscience,  prompted  by  what  then  seemed  an 
irresistible  impulse.  I  was  punished  for  my  selfish 
folly  by  a  total  withdrawal,  for  more  than  two  years, 
of  happiness  and  peace  of  mind."  ^  This  is  the  fa- 
mous passage  which  has  set  the  guessers  at  work,  from 

1  '  Charlotte  Bronte.  A  monograph.'  By  T.  Wemyss  Reid.  New 
York :  Scribner,  Armstrong  &  Co.,  1877,  p.  59. 


Her  Passion  83 

Sir  Wemyss  Reid  to  Mr.  MacKay ;  ^  the  latter  gentle- 
man using  it  for  the  base  of  a  very  elaborate  structure. 
It  is  a  pity  that  the  fine  dialectical  skill  which  cut  to 
pieces  Dr.  Wright's  nice  little  romance  ^  did  not  rest 
its  well-earned  repute  at  the  end  of  that  enjoyable 
performance;  for  the  author  himself  is  obliged  to 
confess  that  the  point  is  not  absolutely  proved,  but 
only  strongly  suggested.^ 

Mr.  MacKay  bases  his  argument  on  what  he  well 
calls  Charlotte's  "element,"  —  the  depiction  of  the 
agony  of  love.  "  Nowhere  else  are  to  be  found 
such  piercing  cries  of  lonely  anguish  as  may  be 
heard  in  '  Shirley  'and  '  Villette.'  They  are  the  very  de 
profundis  of  love  sunk  in  the  abyss  of  despair."  *  He 
quotes  her  statement  that  she  will  never  affect  what 
she  has  not  experienced.  Putting  the  two  together, 
the  conclusion  is  that  "  the  characteristic  experiences 
recorded  in  her  books  were  not  gained  at  Haworth  : 
there  is  no  room  for  any  love  tragedy  there."  ^  In 
Brussels,  therefore,  must  we  search  for  the  solution. 
Now,  Charlotte  could  love  only  an  intellectual  man. 
M.  Heger  was  such  a  man.  He  it  was,  then,  whom 
Charlotte  loved. 

Mr,  Nicholls  and  Miss  Nussey,  the  two  best  and 
the   only   two   living   authorities,  maintain  that  the 

1  *  The  Brontes.  Fact  and  Fiction.'  By  Angus  MacKay.  New 
York :  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.     London  :  Service  &  Paton.     1897. 

2  '  The  Brontes  in  Ireland,  or  Facts  Stranger  than  Fiction.'  By 
Dr.  William  Wright.  New  York :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1893.  This 
is  the  remarkable  book  which  startled  Bronteans  with  the  astounding 
statement  that  '  Wuthering  Heights '  had  its  foundation  in  the  family 
history  in  Ireland,  and  that  Charlotte  derived  her  inspiration  from 
the  same  source.  It  was  received  with  much  applause  and  open-eyed 
wonder,  but  with  the  caveats  of  the  thoughtful.  For  its  complete 
confutation,  see  Mr.  MacKay's  book,  above  mentioned. 

s  MacKay,  p.  73.  *  lb.,  p.  41.  ^  lb.,  p.  45. 


84  Charlotte  Bronte 

particular  reason  for  Charlotte's  anxiety  at  this  time 
was  a  dread  of  leaving  her  father  to  the  unchecked 
temptations  of  a  "  too  festive  curate."  ^  After  her 
first  return  from  Brussels,  she  writes  that  she  has  felt 
for  some  months  that  she  ought  not  to  be  away  from 
him;'^  and  later:  "Whenever  I  consult  my  con- 
science, it  affirms  that  I  am  doing  right  in  staying  at 
home,  and  bitter  are  its  upbraidings  when  I  yield  to 
an  eager  desire  for  release."  ^  But  this  filial  feeling 
is  not  enough  for  Mr.  MacKay,  on  the  ground  that 
she  returns  to  Haworth  after  a  stay  in  Brussels  of 
only  07ie  year,  when  the  father  was  speedily  rescued ; 
whereas  it  was  for  two  years  that  she  suffered  this 
unhappiness.  The  visit  to  the  confessional  is  men- 
tioned ;  the  extravagant  thanks  to  Mary  Taylor  for 
her  advice  to  leave  Brussels,*  and  the  grief  at  parting 
with  Heger^  are  urged  as  illuminating  indications  of 
the  truth  of  the  hypothesis.  The  cessation  of  the 
correspondence  with  Heger,  through  the  intervention 
of  his  wife,  is  made  much  of. 

Turning  to  the  novel,  "  we  are  surprised  to  find 
how  absolutely  Charlotte  accepts  M.  Heger  as  her 
beau  ideal."  ^  All  of  her  heroes  have  a  dash  of  the 
pedagogue.  Helstone,  Louis  Moore,  Crimsworth  are 
"  merely  paler  copies  of  the  same  original."  Char- 
lotte's vision  was  haunted  by  this  figure.     Note,  too, 

1  Shorter,  p.  109.     [Since  this  was  written,  Miss  Nussey  has  died.] 

'  "  You  will  ask  me  why.  It  is  on  papa's  account ;  he  is  now,  as  you 
know,  getting  old,  and  it  grieves  me  to  tell  you  that  he  is  losing  his 
sight.  ...  I  felt  now  that  it  would  be  selfish  to  leave  him  (at  least  as 
long  as  Bramwell  and  Anne  are  absent)  in  order  to  pursue  selfish 
interests  of  my  own.  With  the  help  of  God  I  will  try  to  deny  myself 
in  this  matter  and  to  wait."     Gaskell,  p.  278. 

3  Gaskell,  pp.  325,  326.  *  MacKay,  p.  59. 

*  Gaskell,  p.  278.  *  MacKay,  p.  63. 


Her  Passion  85 

"  the  frequency  of  love  scenes  between  master  and 
pupil  in  these  works."  Even  the  theme  of  'Jane 
Eyre  '  is  similar  in  its  picture  of  a  woman's  love  for  a 
man  who  belongs  to  another  woman.  She  could  not 
make  *  Villette '  end  happily  as  she  did  the  other 
books,  because,  while  "  the  lovers  in  her  other  books 
were  composite  characters,"  having  *'  no  absolute 
originals  in  real  life,"  Paul  Emmanuel  was  too  real  to 
her  to  permit  her  imagination  to  wed  him  to  Lucy 
Snowe, —  in  other  words,  herself.  Mr.  MacKay  even 
lays  her  poems  under  an  embargo  to  help  the  point. 
Where  did  she  get  that  intimate  knowledge  of  love? 
What  was  the  "  irresistible  impulse  "? 

One  ought  not  to  be  compelled  to  say  that  it  is  not 
because  Charlotte  Bronte  will  sink  in  our  esteem  if  we 
accept  this  as  a  solution,  that  we  shrink  from  accept- 
ing it.^  On  the  contrary,  as  Mr.  MacKay  well  points 
out,  she  will  rise,  if  such  a  process  is  possible  with 
one  who  already  occupies  the  highest  place  there- 
It  is  not  a  question  of  shrinking.  The  simple  fact 
is,  the  point  is  not  proved.  That  she  suffered  this 
"  total  withdrawal  of  happiness  "  for  two  years,  where- 
as, by  returning  to  Haworth  at  the  close  of  the  first 
year,  the  happiness  should,  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances, have  been  restored,  is,  with  all  due  respect, 
pettifogging.  If  her  conscience  was  touched  by 
leaving  her  father  at  such  a  time,  knowing  what  a 
conscience  it  was,  we  may  rest  assured  that  the  mere 

1  In  her  defence  of  Miss  Bronte,  Mrs.  Terhune  goes  quite  too  far 
in  speaking  of  this  as  a  " malodorous  scandal"  ['Charlotte  Bronte 
At  Home.'  By  Marion  Harland.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York 
and  London,  1899,  p.  164],  which  it  never  was,  even  in  the  eyes 
of  those  who  support  the  view  here  contested ;  and  she  is  altogether 
unjustified  in  her  suggestion  that  M.  Heger's  part  was  that  of  "a 
gallant  intriguant" 


86  Charlotte  Bronte 

fact  of  his  reform  upon  her  return  would  not  quiet  it. 
Every  time  she  might  think  of  it,  it  would  prick  her, 
no  matter  whether  for  one  year  or  for  ten.  And  this 
severe  conscience  would  undoubtedly  relieve  itself  in 
extravagant  language  to  one  who,  like  Mary  Taylor, 
pointed  out  to  her  her  plain  duty. 

Of  course  she  grieved  at  parting  with  Heger,  her 
one  kind  and  sympathetic  friend  at  the  pensionnat, 
for  whom,  undoubtedly,  she  had  a  warm  affection. 
And  of  course  Mme,  Heger  objected  to  her  corre- 
spondence with  him.  For  was  it  likely  that  the 
original  of  Mme.  Beck  would  regard  a  correspondence 
with  the  original  of  Lucy  Snowe  with  favor?  As  for 
the  similarity  of  her  heroes,  that  is  because  of  her 
realism.  She  only  affected  what  she  had  experienced. 
Her  intellectual  experience  lay  in  Brussels,  and  was 
affected  more  by  M.  Heger  than  by  any  other  man. 
It  was  a  narrow  experience :  what  more  natural  than 
that  he  should  form  a  type  for  her,  when  she  had  so 
few  originals  to  choose  from?  Much  of  her  experi- 
ence in  her  formative  period  was  spent  in  governess- 
ing;  and  the  slavery  of  the  life,  and  its  hopelessly 
loveless  social  degradation,  were  burned  into  her 
consciousness.  She  could  more  easily  fashion  her 
imagination  upon  the  unrequited  loves  of  women  in 
her  position  than  upon  any  other  theme.  Without 
doubt,  the  peculiar  unfitness  of  the  Brontes  for  such  a 
life  made  it  more  intolerable  to  them  than  to  most 
girls  forced  by  untoward  circumstance  to  leave  their 
homes.  Often,  indeed,  the  homes  they  go  into  are 
more  comfortable  than  those  they  leave.  But  the 
social  inequalities  were  made  very  prominent  to 
Charlotte,  and  she  is  fairly  entitled  to  ask  the  ques- 
tion :  How  can  a  great  man  like  Rochester  care  for  a 


Her  Passion  87 

poor  unknown  nobody  like  me,  Jane  Eyre?  How- 
can  I,  Louis  Moore,  a  pauper  and  a  dependant,  hon- 
orably make  love  to  a  rich  lady  like  Miss  Keeldar? 
Does  it  follow,  because  she  asked  herself  these 
questions,  out  of  the  depth  of  her  experience  in 
similar  positions,  that  they  are  merely  pale  reflec- 
tions of  an  actual  passion  she  once  entertained  for  a 
married  man  in  Brussels?  The  fact  that  he  was 
married  is  a  sufficient  indication  to  me  that  she  did 
not  love  him  in  this  way,  so  long  as  there  are  no 
direct  proofs  to  the  contrary. 

And  as  for  the  "  irresistible  impulse,"  is  not  too 
much  made  of  it?  Do  we  not  all  of  us  suffer  from 
irresistible  impulses  at  times?  —  the  impulse  to  leave 
a  dull  home  for  scenes  of  activity,  for  example?  The 
impulse  for  change  of  scene  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
most  irresistible  in  nature,  and  one  which  will  over- 
ride conscience,  common  sense,  and  all  the  other 
virtues  beginning  with  "  C." 

It  is  so  easy  to  find  reasons  in  a  writer's  life  to 
explain  a  writer's  work ;  and  it  is  so  particularly  easy 
in  Miss  Bronte's  case  to  read  between  the  lines  that 
we  have  fallen  into  the  impertinent  habit  of  reading 
into  them.  Let  me  offer  a  few  intrinsic  reasons  on 
the  contrary  side.  The  acme  of  one  stage  of  Lucy's 
sufferings  is  her  visit  to  the  confessional,  of  which 
much  is  made  by  the  supporters  of  this  hypothesis. 
But  that  occurred  before  her  love  for  Paul  Emmanuel 
had  awakened.  Again,  why  not  attempt  to  deduce 
from  her  treatment  of  Dr.  John  that  she  was  in  love 
with  his  well-known  original  also,  George  Smith? 
Why  were  his  letters  so  precious  to  Lucy?  To  be 
sure,  she  disclaims,  "  with  the  utmost  scorn,  every 
sneaking  suspicion  of  what  are  called  warmer  feel- 


88  Charlotte  Bronte 

ings,"  and  says  that  women  never  entertain  them 
when  "to  do  so  would  be  to  commit  a  mortal  absurd- 
ity." She  admitted  there  was  no  hope  in  that  case; 
yet  there  was  all  the  more  a  struggle  between  the 
feelings  and  the  reason  (so  keen  was  the  struggle 
that  she  invariably  capitalizes  the  powers,  incarnating 
them  like  classic  fates).  It  was  his  nature  to  be  affec- 
tionate, she  argues.  He  was  to  her  what  the  necta- 
rine is  to  the  bee  that  feeds  on  it.  "  Is  the  sweet-briar 
enamoured  of  the  air?"  This  proves  to  her  that  he 
does  not  love  her  with  a  wooer's  love ;  but  it  does 
not  prove  that  she  does  not  love  him :  the  most  that 
it  proves  is  that  her  sturdy  reason  will  not  allow  her 
to  indulge  in  any  foolish  hopes  concerning  it.  She 
sums  it  up  to  Paulina  thus : 

"  I  '11  tell  you  what  I  do,  Paulina  .  .  .  I  never  see  him.  I 
looked  at  him  twice  or  thrice  about  a  year  ago,  before  he 
recognized  me,  and  then  I  shut  my  eyes ;  and  if  he  were 
to  cross  their  balls  twelve  times  between  each  day's  sunset 
and  sunrise,  except  from  memory  I  should  hardly  know 
what  shape  had  gone  by.  ...  I  mean  that  I  value  vision, 
and  dread  being  struck  stone  blind."  It  was  best  to  an- 
swer her  strongly  at  once,  and  to  silence  forever  the 
tender,  passionate  confidences  which  left  her  lips  sweet 
honey,  and  sometimes  dropped  in  my  ear  —  molten  lead. 

It  is  demonstrated  that  the  barrier  her  reason  —  that 
deadly  reason  !  —  erected  between  them  would  have 
been  broken  down  had  Dr.  John  manifested  a  lover's 
passion.  So  why  not,  I  repeat,  find  in  that  history 
the  history  of  Lucy  Snowe's  original?  It  seems  to 
me  quite  as  valid  as  the  other. 

But  why,  in  all  seriousness,  should  we  forget  that 
Charlotte  Bronte  is  a  novelist?     Because,  more  than 


Her  Passion  89 

any  other,  she  wrote  herself  and  her  friends  into  her 
fictions,  they  do  not  cease  to  be  fictions.  Her  char- 
acter is  there ;  not  necessarily  every  detail  of  her 
actual  life.  She  was  a  lonely  woman,  thrice  lonely  at 
the  time  of  this  '  Villette ; '  and  Lucy  Snowe  echoed  the 
cry  that  went  up  from  her  desolate  heart.  I  think  every 
sympathetically  observing  man  of  middle  age  must 
number  among  his  acquaintances  many  women  who 
more  or  less  vaguely  convey  the  notion  to  his  mas- 
culine understanding  that  there  are  locked  up  in  their 
bosoms  many  sentimental  confidences  to  which  the 
key  would  not  be  hard  to  find.  Charlotte  Bronte  had 
scornful  words  to  utter  on  feminine  outpourings  such 
as  these : 

As  far  as  I  knew  them,  the  chance  of  a  gossip  about 
their  usually  trivial  secrets,  their  often  very  washy  and 
paltry  feelings,  was  a  treat  not  to  be  readily  forgone. 

She  was  too  reserved,  too  proud,  too  maidenly,  to  be 
guilty  of  such  confidences  herself;  and  her  sentiment 
(which,  because  it  was  true  and  not  false,  because  it 
was  based  on  an  ideal  longing  for  real  affection  in  a 
loveless  environment,  became  to  her  a  passion  con- 
suming) went  into  what  she  thought  was  impersonal 
fiction ;  as  a  composer  may  throw  into  music  what 
he  would  not  talk  of  among  his  fellow-men.  Her 
life  was  a  vacuum,  which  passionate  nature  abhorring, 
sent  its  own  passion  into  to  fill.  It  is  the  passion  of 
passion  which  breathes  in  '  Villette ;  '  not  the  picture 
of  any  particular  passion  in  her  experience,  but  pas- 
sion's self. 

But  might  she  not  possibly  have  been  in  love  with 
him?  Why,  certainly:  just  as  she  might  possibly 
have  entertained  a  hopeless  passion  for  Louis  Napo- 


90  Charlotte  Bronte 

leon  or  the  Prince  Consort.  I  cheerfully  confess  my 
inability  to  read  the  secrets  of  her  heart,  and  I  take 
joy  in  that  inability. 


Ill 

Why  was  she  sad?  No  one  who  has  read  the 
biography  need  ever  ask  the  question.  Mrs.  Gaskell 
has  been  charged  by  later  writers  with  drawing  too 
sombre  a  picture,  but  Mr.  Shorter's  book  merely  in- 
tensifies the  gloom.i   "  Nothing  happens  at  Haworth," 

^  It  is  the  highest  tribute  to  Mrs.  Gaskell's  work  that  so  much  of 
it  stands  after  the  winnowing  of  Mr.  Shorter.  The  two  books  should 
be  read  together,  Mr.  Shorter  completing  what  Mrs.  Gaskell  began  ; 
and  the  student  desirous  of  the  facts  of  Miss  Bronte's  life  need  read 
none  of  the  other  biographies,  except  Sir  Wemyss  Reid's  ;  although 
the  Bronte  enthusiast  will  read  them  all.  [He  will  take  particular 
pleasure,  also,  in  the  article  '  In  The  Early  Forties,'  by  Sir  George 
Murray  Smith,  in  the  Critic  for  January,  1901.  It  is  like  a  voice  from 
the  tombs  to  hear  the  Dr.  John  of  '  Villette '  tell  his  reminiscences 
at  this  late  date.]  Mr.  Shorter's  individual  book  and  his  annota- 
tions of  Mrs.  Gaskell's  '  Life '  are  invaluable  additions  to  the  sub- 
ject :  his  conscientiously  gathered  collection  of  letters,  added  to  those 
published  by  Mrs.  Gaskell,  and  in  some  places  correcting  them,  throws 
the  fullest  light  on  the  life  of  the  Brontes.  Mrs.  Gaskell's  mistakes 
of  fact  were  not  so  many  as  were  her  errors  of  judgment  in  writing 
too  frankly  of  the  living ;  and  the  book  is  one  of  the  best  proofs  ex- 
tant of  the  impossibility  of  a  final  biography  written  at  a  near  period 
to  the  death  of  the  subject.  The  solitary  advantage  of  writing  at 
such  a  period  is  that  valuable  impressions  vivid  then,  and  facts  re- 
membered then,  may  pass  away  and  be  forgotten  later.  The  only 
remedy  would  seem  to  be  to  write  soon  after  death,  and  to  put  away 
the  writing  until  such  time  as  the  future  will  permit  for  the  rectifi- 
cation of  the  inevitable  errors  and  the  publication  of  the  proved 
facts. 

Mrs.  Gaskell's  book  was  resented  in  Yorkshire  as  an  unfriendly 
picture  from  a  Lancashire  standpoint.  Yet  her  object  was  merely  to 
show  that  Charlotte  herself  held  the  same  views  ;  that  certain  of  her 
Yorkshire  characters  were  but  exemplifications  of  the  Yorkshire  say- 
ing which  Miss  Bronte  quoted  her:  "  Keep  a  stone  in  thy  pocket  seven 


Her  Passion  91 

writes  Charlotte,  "  nothing  at  least  of  a  pleasant 
kind."  ^  The  only  happiness  there  ever  was  in  the 
Haworth  vicarage  was  in  the  early  days.  The  loneli- 
ness of  the  physical  surroundings,  the  constraint  im- 
posed upon  a  willing  affection  by  an  unsympathetic 
father,  the  torments  of  a  brother's  depravity,  then 
loneliness  once  more  —  the  utter  loneliness  of  death. 

The  purpose  in  going  to  Brussels  was  to  fit  her  for 
the  management  of  a  school.  When  she  had  by 
conscientious  painstaking  so  prepared  herself,  with 
Heger's  diploma  in  her  hands,  stating  that  she  was 
capable  of  teaching  French  and  was  proficient  in  the 
best  methods  of  instruction  for  the  conduct  of  a 
school,  notwithstanding  her  great  desire  to  carry  out 
this  plan,  she  is  nevertheless  called  away  from  all  these 
fruits  of  victory  by  duties  at  Haworth.  "With  the 
help  of  God,  I  will  try  to  deny  myself  in  this  matter 
and  to  wait."  That  was,  in  itself,  a  sufficient  reason 
for  sorrow  in  the  home-going.  She  was  giving  up  a 
cherished  scheme,  and  the  "  irresistible  impulse " 
which  drew  her  to  Brussels  against  her  conscience  may 
very  well  have  been  the  fervent  desire  to  complete  her 
course  so  that  she  could  at  once  embark  upon  her  life 
work,  notwithstanding  the  ever-present  conscious- 
ness that  her  father's  weakness  stood  in  the  way  of  its 
consummation.^ 


year;  turn  it,  and  keep  it  seven  year  longer,  that  it  may  be  ever  ready 
to  thine  hand  when  thine  enemy  draws  near"  \jp.  12].  Mary  Taylor 
says  the  book  is  not  so  gloomy  as  the  truth.     [^Shorter,  p.  22.3 

1  Gaskell,  p.  327. 

2  It  was  not  teaching  that  wore  her  out.  Jane  Eyre  finds  pleasure 
in  the  school  at  Morton.  Lucy  Snowe  declines  Mr.  Home's  offer  to 
treble  the  salary  she  receives  from  Mme.  Beck  if  she  will  become 
the  companion  of  his  daughter.  "  I  declined.  I  think  I  should  have 
declined  had  I  been  poorer  than  I  was,  and  with  scantier  fund  of  re- 


92  Charlotte  Bronte 

There  were  other  griefs  at  the  time :  Martha 
Taylor's  death,  Mary  Taylor's  going  to  New  Zea- 
land, which  was  equivalent  to  death — but  who  shall 
explain  all  the  causes  for  depression  in  sensitive 
human  nature?  Like  all  susceptible  minds,  hers  had 
premonitions :  her  "  conscience  "  was  probably  stirred 
by  such.  After  her  return,  finding  Bramwell  in  his 
sad  plight,  she  writes :  "  When  I  left  you  I  was 
strongly  impressed  with  the  feeling  that  I  was  going 
back  to  sorrow."  ^  It  has  been  sufficiently  proved  that 
Bramwell's  fall  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  tragic 
tone  of  his  sister's  life  in  Brussels.  But  it  is  merely 
a  chronological  point,  after  all :  the  fall  occurred  after 
the  return  to  Haworth,  hit  before  the  writing  of 
*  Villette!  Her  letters  relating  to  Bramwell  form  an 
abundant  evidence  of  its  effect  upon  her,  if  any  proof 
were  necessary  on  such  a  subject.  With  one  whose 
public  writings  were  so  closely  a  transcript  of  her 
private  feelings,  who  can  doubt  that  that  fall  added 
its  tinge  of  sorrow  to  the  gloom?  That  all  the  gloom, 
or,  indeed,  the  major  part  of  it,  was  due  to  this  cause, 
we  cannot  think,  for  with  all  her  melancholy,  Char- 
lotte had  a  sturdy  common-sense  which  could  delib- 

source,  more  stinted  narrowness  of  future  prospect.  I  had  not  that 
vocation.  I  could  teach ;  I  could  give  lessons  ;  but  to  be  either  a 
private  governess  or  a  companion  was  unnatural  to  me.  Rather 
than  fill  the  former  post  in  any  great  house,  I  would  have  deliberately 
taken  a  housemaid's  place,  bought  a  strong  pair  of  gloves,  swept  bed- 
rooms and  staircases,  and  cleaned  stoves  and  locks  in  peace  and 
independence.  Rather  than  be  a  companion,  I  would  have  made 
shirts  and  starved  ...  I  was  no  bright  lady's  shadow."  Compare 
this  with  the  subtle  analysis  of  her  deficiencies  in  her  letter  to  Mr. 
Williams  of  May  12,  1848.  [^Shorter,  pp.  375  seq7\  It  was  the  de- 
pendent life  of  a  governesi  which  appalled  her,  and  for  which  she  had 
the  same  hatred  as  Mary  WoUstonecraft. 
^  Gaskell,  p.  295. 


Her  Passion  93 

erately  put  out  of  sight,  though  not  without  fearful 
wrenchings,  all  that  interfered  with  her  convictions  of 
right  and  wrong.  The  more  yielding  spirit  of  Anne 
was  the  most  completely  crushed  by  this  spectacle, 
and  in  '  The  Tenant  of  Wildfell  Hall '  we  have,  so  far 
as  I  know,  the  one  instance  in  the  literature  of  fic- 
tion of  a  book  written  in  an  intensely  abhorrent 
mood,  as  a  religious  duty,  —  with  not  only  no  artis- 
tic satisfaction  with  the  theme,  but  with  an  anguished 
shrinking  from  it.  Not  even  Emily  could  have  suc- 
ceeded under  such  genetic  restraints,  much  less  Anne 
with  her  sweet  mediocrity.  As  for  Charlotte,  there 
is  a  mixture  of  disgust  in  her  references  to  Bramwell, 
which  saved  her  from  the  paralyzing  influences  his  mis- 
conduct wrought  upon  the  youngest  of  the  sisters. 
What  has  become  a  basilisk  to  natures  whose  zeal  is 
unchecked  by  discretion,  the  Ithuriel  spear  of  stronger 
spirits  transforms  into  its  original  shape.-^ 

The  Reverend  Patrick  Bronte,  A.  B.,^  was  not  alto- 
gether unlike  that  father  of  another  famous  woman 

1  See  p.  51. 

2  The  origin  of  the  name  has  never  been  explained.  "  In  the  reg- 
ister of  his  birth  his  name  is  entered,  as  are  the  births  of  his  brothers 
and  sisters,  as  Brunty  and  Bruntee  ;  and  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted, 
as  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  has  pointed  out,  the  original  name  was 
O'Prunty."  [Shorter,  p.  29.]  The  name  was  variously  spelled  Brunty, 
Bruntee,  Bronty,  Branty.  QThe  Bronte  Society's  Publication,  Ft. 
III.]  Mr.  Shorter's  guess  that  the  spelling  '  Bronte'  came  with  the 
dukedom  of  that  name  conferred  upon  Lord  Nelson  in  1799,  is  a 
clever  one  ;  but  although  Miss  Bronte  knew  of  course  the  identity  of 
the  names,  she  refers  to  it  as  a  mere  accident.  If  her  father,  or  some 
one  else,  had  purposely  conformed  the  spelling  to  Lord  Nelson's 
title,  I  think  she  was  ignorant  of  it.  She  appeared,  indeed,  to  be 
singularly  unconcerned  about  her  ancestors,  there  being  no  reference 
to  the  subject  in  her  correspondence.  Mr.  Bronte  was  doubtless 
struck  by  the  high-sounding  Greek  name,  suggesting  perhaps  '  Boa- 
nerges '  to  his  ministerial  mind,  and  thenceforth  adopted  it. 


94  Charlotte  Bronte 

who  has  recently  been  made  better  known  to  us.  We 
may  easily  discount  as  unsubstantiated  gossip  some 
of  the  episodes  which  Mrs.  Gaskell  chronicles,  with- 
out materially  modifying  our  estimate  of  his  charac- 
ter. ^  It  is  a  little  too  much  to  ask  us  to  believe,  as 
Mr.  Shorter  does,  that  the  old  man's  passions  were 
thoroughly  aroused  "  for  once  and  for  the  only  time 
in  his  life  "^  when  Mr.  Nicholls  asked  him  for  his 
daughter's  hand.  I  have  a  little  sympathy  with  the 
grim  old  tyrant's  contempt  for  the  quaking  curate,  but 
no  reasonable  excuse  can  be  offered  for  the  violence 
of  his  outbreak.  Such  violence  does  not  come  late 
in  life  ;  it  echoes  former  tempests. 

The  children  suffered  from  his  idiosyncrasies, 
which  are  traceable,  after  the  manner  of  idiosyn- 
crasies, to  a  general  poverty  of  liberal  knowledge  on 
subjects  the  secrets  of  which  are  not  far  to  seek  for 
open-minded  conscientiousness.  Mr.  Bronte's  views 
on  education,  for  example,  were  really  a  lack  of  views; 
and  he  strove  in  moments  of  active  practice  to  atone 
for  hours  of  neglect.  Just  how  much  of  Mrs.  Gas- 
kell's  "  gossip  "  Mr.  Shorter  would  throw  out  is  not 
evident;  he  would  probably  exclude  the  testimony  of 
the  nurse  who  tended  Mrs.  Bronte  concerning  the 
father's  Spartan  (or,  considering  both  the  vegetable 
and  the  man,  should  we  say  Irish?)  prohibition  of 
aught  but  potatoes  for  the  children's  dinner.  But 
Miss  Nussey  supports  it,  and  hers  is  the  only  author- 

^  Miss  Nussey  contributed  an  article  to  Scribner's  for  May,  187 1, 
which  is  an  exceedingly  interesting  addition  to  Bronteana,  and  it  has 
generally  been  overlooked.  The  origin  of  the  pistol-firing  stories 
may  be  found  here.  Miss  Nussey  says  that  every  morning  Mr. 
Bronte  discharged  the  load  which  was  entered  the  night  before.  See 
also  Shorter's  note  to  Gaskell,  pp.  52  seq. 

*  Shorter,  p.  474. 


Her  Passion  95 

itative  voice  on  the  subject.  "  For  years,"  she  says, 
"  they  had  not  tasted  animal  food."  ^  Mary  Taylor 
also  writes  that  Charlotte  never  touched  it  at  Roe 
Head.2  And  we  find  it  hard  to  forgive  him  for  allow- 
ing Charlotte  and  Emily  to  return  to  Cowan's  Bridge 
after  the  deaths  of  Maria  and  Elizabeth.  The  dry  egoist 
was  wrapped  up  in  his  invalid's  seclusion ;  and  the 
all-sufficient  proof  of  the  want  of  sympathy  between 
the  children  and  their  father  is  that  their  writing  was 
done  in  secret,  and  divulged  only  when  the  knowl- 
edge could  not  longer  be  kept  from  him. 

But  very  little  sympathy  can  be  felt  for  such  troubles 
of  a  man  as  arise  from  a  too  numerous  progeny;  and 
pious  references  to  the  authority  of  Scripture  as  to 
the  blessedness  of  quiversful  may  safely  be  met  by 
the  equal  authority  of  Psalm  xvii.  14.  A  wife  sacri- 
ficed to  excessive  motherhood  is  not  a  pleasant 
spectacle  to  contemplate.^ 

We  have  seen  that  his  blindness  was  a  cause  of  sor- 
rowful anxiety  to  Charlotte.  We  know  with  what 
dutiful  obedience  was  borne  his  senseless  opposition 
to  her  marriage.  We  know  how  tenderly  his  whims 
were  humored  and  his  wishes  anticipated.  And  we 
may  be  certain  that  a  part  of  the  gloom  is  due  to  his 
cold  privacy  and  uncertain  temper.  We  see  his 
reflection  in  Mr.  Helstone.* 

1  Scribner's,  May,  187 1. 

2  Gaskell,  p.  104. 

^  See  '  Rousseau.'    By  John  Morley,  vol.  i.,  pp.  124-125. 

*  Mr.  F.  A.  Leyland,  in  an  elaborate  two-volume  work  ['The  Bronte 
Family.  With  special  reference  to  Patrick  Bramwell  Bronte.'  Lon- 
don :  Hurst  and  Blackett,  1886],  has  attempted  the  defence  of  both 
father  and  brother.  In  regard  to  Bramwell,  as  Mr.  Birrell  character- 
istically remarks,  "he  fails  to  interest  those  who,  to  employ  an  Ameri- 
can figure,  '  have  no  use  '  for  that  young  man."  He  fails  to  interest 
because   he   fails   to  convince;    and   the  whole    pitiful    story  had 


96  Charlotte  Bronte 

Our  easy-jogging  optimism,  fostered  by  pleasant 
surroundings,  and  drawing  its  springs  principally  from 
the  negative  virtues,  if  not  sometimes  from  the  posi- 
tive vices,  finds  it  not  difficult  to  lay  the  charge  of 
morbid  fancies  against  those  whom  the  stars  in  their 
courses  seem  to  fight.  There  was  much  to  foster  such 
fancies  in  the  life  of  Charlotte  Bronte :  the  conditions 
were  ripe  for  melancholy.  She  had,  in  the  first  place, 
that  kind  of  constitutional  ill-health  which  takes  the 
backbone  out  of  a  certain  kind  of  men,  and  makes  of 
them  a  certain  kind  of  saints.  The  physical  condi- 
tions of  a  life,  both  past  and  present,  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  the  summing  up.  The  parsonage  was 
undoubtedly  very  often  too  cold  for  health,  to  say 
nothing  of  comfort.  Once  she  excuses  the  illegi- 
bility of  her  writing  on  the  plea  that  her  fingers 
are  numb  with  cold ;  ^  and  much  of  the  ill-health  is 
undoubtedly  traceable  to  the  stone  steps  which  the 
shivering  family  had  to  go  up  and  down  many  times  a 
day.  Think  of  what  a  Yorkshire  winter  meant  in 
such  a  house  to  children  in  whom  inherited  weakness 
only  needed  slight  encouragement  to  develop  into  in- 
curable disease.  Little  wonder  that  the  letters  form  a 
dark,  continuous  diary  of  bronchitis,  toothache,  loss  of 
appetite,  cold,  coughs,  consumption,  death. 

That  microscopical  handwriting  of  the  early  years 

much  better  been  left  untold.  All  that  the  two  volumes  contain 
which  is  really  a  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  the  subject  could 
have  been  condensed  into  a  short  magazine  article ;  and  the  porten- 
tous bombast  and  effeminate  fancy  of  the  verses  which  have  been 
here  so  painstakenly  collected  serve  no  other  purpose  than  to  empha- 
size the  mean  absurdity  of  the  rumor  that  Bramwell,  and  not  Emily, 
was  the  author  of  '  Wuthering  Heights.'  See  also  Mr.  Francis  H. 
Grundy's  '  Pictures  of  the  Past,'  London,  1879. 
^  Shorter,  p.  408. 


Her  Passion  97 

must  be  taken  into  the  account.  Of  those  youthful 
productions  thirty-six  have  come  down  to  us,  contain- 
ing about  700,000  words.  That  would  make  about 
seven  large  octavo  books  of  ordinary  type,  of  three 
hundred  pages  each.  She  crowded  35,000  words  on 
eighteen  pages  ;  which  is  equal  to  one  hundred  pages, 
ordinary  type !  Every  sufferer  from  overstrained 
eyesight  will  credit  these  performances  with  a  good 
part  of  the  ill-health  which  followed. 

They  had  no  other  children  for  playmates,  and  their 
influence  upon  one  another  was  intensified  by  this 
cross-breeding  of  the  family  intellect,  so  to  speak. 
There  is  no  record  of  children's  books  in  the  family 
library,  which,  indeed,  is  to  be  reckoned  an  asset  of 
happiness,  when  we  recall  what  children's  books  were 
in  that  day.  At  the  same  time,  knowing  what  they  are 
in  this  day,  and  how  they  influence  youthful  minds,  we 
can  fancy  what  the  lack  meant. 

Her  physical  torments  pursued  her  to  the  foreign 
city.  The  demon  of  cold,  indeed,  seemed  fated  to 
follow  her  wherever  she  went.  She  complains  they 
have  no  fires  in  the  pensionnat,  ^  and  says  at  another 
time :  "  During  the  bitter  cold  weather  we  had  through 
February  and  the  principal  part  of  March,  I  did  not 
regret  that  you  had  not  accompanied  me.  If  I  had 
seen  you  shivering  as  I  shivered  myself,  if  I  had 
seen  your  hands  and  feet  as  red  and  swelled  as  mine 
were,  my  discomfort  would  just  have  been  doubled. 
I  can  do  very  well  under  this  sort  of  thing;  it  does 
not  fret  me ;  it  only  makes  me  numb  and  silent;  but  if 
you  were  to  pass  a  winter  in  Belgium,  you  would  be 
ill."  2  And  while  speaking  of  Brussels,  it  seems  ap- 
propriate to  mention  the  other  drawbacks  to  her  hap- 
1  Gaskell,  p.  274.  2  /^^^  p,  262. 

7 


98  Charlotte  Bronte 

piness  there,  each  of  which  added  its  weight  to  the 
sadness  of '  Villette.' 

Emily  was  not  with  her  on  this  second  visit.  When 
not  occupied  with  her  duties  she  was  as  absolutely 
alone  as  if  she  had  been  on  a  desert  island.  "  I  get 
on  here  from  day  to  day  in  a  Robinson-Crusoe-like 
sortof  a  way,  very  lonely,  but  that  does  not  signify."  ^ 
"  Brussels  is  indeed  desolate  to  me  now.  I  am  com- 
pletely alone.  I  cannot  count  the  Belgians  anything. 
It  is  a  curious  position  to  be  so  utterly  solitary  in  the 
midst  of  numbers.  Sometimes  the  solitude  oppresses 
me  to  an  excess.  One  day  lately  I  felt  as  if  I  could 
bear  it  no  longer.  .  .  .  One  day  is  like  another  in  this 
place.  I  know  you,  living  in  the  country,  can  hardly 
believe  it  is  possible  life  can  be  monotonous  in  the  cen- 
tre of  a  brilliant  capital  like  Brussels;  but  so  it  is.  I 
feel  it  most  on  holidays,  when  all  the  girls  and  teach- 
ers go  out  to  visit,  and  it  sometimes  happens  that  I  am 
left  during  several  hours  quite  alone,  with  four  great 
desolate  school-rooms  at  my  disposition.  I  try  to 
read,  I  try  to  write  ;  but  in  vain.  I  then  wander  about 
from  room  to  room,  but  the  silence  and  loneliness  of 
all  the  house  weighs  down  one's  spirits  like  lead."^ 

The  obtuseness  and  riotous  disorder  of  her  Belgian 
pupils  were  a  sore  trial  to  her  spirit,  and  the  Jesuit 
atmosphere  was  poison  to  her  free  English  breath. 

The  grandes  vacances  began  soon  .  .  .  when  she  was  left 
in  a  great  deserted  pensionnat,  with  only  one  teacher  for  a 
companion.  This  teacher,  a  Frenchwoman,  had  always 
been  uncongenial  to  her;  but,  left  to  each  other's  sole 
companionship,  Charlotte  soon  discovered  that  her  asso- 
ciate was  more  profligate,  more  steeped  in  a  kind  of  cold, 

^  Gaskell,  p.  264.  2  /^j,^  p_  273. 


Her  Passion  99 

systematic  sensualit)',  than  she  had  before  imagined  it  pos- 
sible for  a  human  being  to  be ;  and  her  whole  nature  re- 
volted from  this  woman's  society.  A  low  nervous  fever  was 
gaining  on  Miss  Bronte.  She  had  never  been  a  good  sleeper, 
but  now  she  could  not  sleep  at  all.  Whatever  had  been 
disagreeable,  or  obnoxious,  to  her  during  the  day,  was 
presented  when  it  was  over,  with  exaggerated  vividness  to  her 
disordered  fancy.  ...  In  the  dead  of  the  night,  lying  awake 
at  the  end  of  the  long,  deserted  dormitory,  in  the  vast  and 
silent  house,  every  fear  respecting  those  whom  she  loved, 
and  who  were  so  far  off  in  another  country,  became  a  ter- 
rible reality,  oppressing  her  and  choking  up  the  very  life 
blood  in  her  heart.  Those  nights  were  times  of  sick,  dreary, 
wakeful  misery ;  precursors  of  many  such  in  after  years. 

In  the  daytime,  driven  abroad  by  loathing  of  her  com- 
panion and  by  the  weak  restlessness  of  fever,  she  tried  to 
walk  herself  into  such  a  state  of  bodily  fatigue  as  would 
induce  sleep.  So  she  went  out,  and  with  weary  steps  would 
traverse  the  Boulevards  and  streets  sometimes  for  hours 
together,  faltering  and  resting  occasionally  on  some  of  the 
many  benches  placed  for  the  repose  of  happy  groups,  or  for 
solitary  wanderers  like  herself.  Then  up  again  —  anywhere 
but  to  the  pensionnat  —  out  to  the  cemetery  where  Martha 
lay  —  out  beyond  it,  to  the  hills  whence  there  is  nothing  to 
be  seen  but  fields  as  far  as  the  horizon.  The  shades  of 
evening  made  her  retrace  her  footsteps  —  sick  for  want  of 
food,  but  not  hungry ;  fatigued  with  long  continued  exercise 
—  yet  restless  still,  and  doomed  to  another  weary,  haunted 
night  of  sleeplessness.  She  would  thread  the  streets  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Rue  d'Isabelle,  and  yet  avoid  it  and  its 
occupant,  till  as  late  an  hour  as  she  dared  be  out.  At  last, 
she  was  compelled  to  keep  her  bed  for  some  days.^ 

From  the  letters  she  wrote  from  Brussels,  and  from 
'  Villette,'  we  know  that  this  is  not  exaggerated.     The 
1  Gaskell,  pp.  270  seq. 


loo  Charlotte  Bronte 

frightful  monotony  of  her  existence  under  these  sur- 
roundings is  surely  sufficient  to  account  for  the  per- 
vasive melancholy  of  the  story,  and  the  homesickness 
was  of  the  acutest  sort. 

But  there  was  one  consuming  fire  of  pain  in  her 
life  which  in  its  biting  fierceness  was  alone  sufficient  to 
lead  her  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow;  and  that  was 
the  death  of  her  sisters.  Whatever  of  brightness, 
whatever  of  joy,  whatever  of  the  glad  zest  of  existence 
there  was  in  her  career  drew  its  inspiration  from  the 
sunshine  of  their  companionship;  and  when  this  was 
withdrawn  there  ensued  that  death-in-life  which  she 
has  so  deathlessly  celebrated.  Of  Emily  she  writes  : 
"  You  must  look  on  and  see  her  do  what  she  is  unfit 
to  do,  and  not  dare  to  say  a  word  —  a  painful  neces- 
sity for  those  to  whom  her  health  and  existence  are  as 
precious  as  the  life  in  their  veins.  When  she  is  ill 
there  seems  to  be  no  sunshine  in  the  world  for  me. 
The  tie  of  sister  is  near  and  dear  indeed,  and  I  think 
a  certain  harshness  in  her  powerful  and  peculiar 
character  only  makes  me  cling  to  her  more.  .  .  . 
Above  all,  never  allude  to  .  .  .  the  name  Emily  when 
you  write  to  me." ^  "I  hope  still,  for  I  must  hope  — 
she  is  dear  to  me  as  life.  If  I  let  the  faintness  of 
despair  reach  my  heart  I  shall  become  worthless."^ 
Then,  when  it  was  over:  "  Life  has  become  very  void, 
and  hope  has  proved  a  strange  traitor ;  when  I  shall 
be  able  again  to  put  confidence  in  her  suggestions,  I 
know  not:  she  kept  whispering  that  Emily  would 
not,  could  not  die,  and  where  is  she  now  ?  Out  of 
my  reach,  out  of  my  world  — torn  from  me."  ^ 

Upon  her  return  from  Anne's  funeral,  she  writes : 
"  I  left  Papa  soon  and  went  into  the  dining-room  :   I 

1  Shorter,  p.  167.  *  Ih.,  p.  174.  '  lb.,  p.  176. 


Her  Passion  loi 

shut  the  door —  I  tried  to  be  glad  that  I  was  come 
home.     I  have  always  been  glad  before  except  once 

—  even  then  I  was  cheered.  But  this  time  joy  was 
not  to  be  the  sensation.  I  felt  that  the  house  was  all 
silent  —  the  rooms  were  all  empty.  I  remembered 
where  the  three  were  laid  —  in  what  narrow,  dark 
dwellings — nevermore  to  reappear  on  earth.  So  the 
sense  of  desolation  and  bitterness  took  possession  of 
me.  The  agony  that  was  to  be  undergone  and  was 
not  to  be  avoided,  came  on,  .  .  .  The  great  trial  is 
when  evening  closes  and  night  approaches.  At  that 
hour  we  used  to  assemble  in  the  dining-room — we 
used  to  talk.  Now  I  sit  by  myself.  .  .  .  "  ^  She 
knows  that  "  Solitude,  Remembrance,  and  Longing" 

—  that  trinity  of  grief — are  to  be  her  sole  com- 
panions from  that  day  on. 

Turn,  now,  to  the  novels: 

It  flashes  on  me  at  this  moment  how  sisters  feel  toward 
each  other.  Affection  twined  with  their  life,  which  no 
shocks  of  feeling  can  uproot,  which  little  quarrels  only 
trample  an  instant  that  it  may  spring  more  freshly  when 
the  pressure  is  removed ;  affection  that  no  passion  can  ulti- 
mately outrival,  with  which  even  love  itself  cannot  do  more 
than  compete  in  force  and  truth. .  Love  hurts  us  so  :  it  is 
so  tormenting,  so  racking,  and  it  burns  away  our  strength 
with  its  flame ;  in  affection  there  is  no  pain  and  no  fire,  only 
sustenance  and  balm. 

The  sympathetic  reader  of  Miss  Bronte's  novels 
can  put  his  finger  on  the  first  passage  written  after 
the  sharp  agony  of  Emily's  death,  —  so  burned  into 
the  fibre  of  her  being  was  its  vital  impress : 

1  Gaskell,  p.  421. 


I02  Charlotte  Bronte 

.  .  .  she  spent  the  night  like  Jacob  at  Peniel.  Till  break 
of  day  she  wrestled  with  God  in  earnest  prayer.  Not 
always  do  those  who  dare  such  divine  conflict  prevail.  Night 
after  night  the  sweat  of  agony  may  burst  dark  on  the  fore- 
head j  the  supplicant  may  cry  for  mercy  with  that  soundless 
voice  the  soul  utters  when  its  appeal  is  to  the  Invisible 
"  Spare  my  beloved,"  it  may  implore,  "  heal  my  life's  life. 
Rend  not  from  me  what  long  affection  entwines  with  my  whole 
nature.  God  of  heaven  —  bend  —  hear  —  be  clement!" 
And  after  this  cry  and  strife,  the  sun  may  rise  and  see  him 
worsted.  That  opening  morn,  which  used  to  salute  him 
with  the  whisper  of  zephyrs,  the  carol  of  skylarks,  may 
breathe  as  its  first  accents  from  the  dear  lips  which  color 
and  heat  have  quitted  : 

"  Oh  !  I  have  had  a  suffering  night.  This  morning  I  am 
worse.  I  have  tried  to  rise.  I  cannot.  Dreams  I  am  un- 
used to  have  troubled  me." 

Then  the  watcher  approaches  the  patient's  pillow,  and 
sees  a  new  and  strange  moulding  of  the  familiar  features, 
feels  at  once  that  the  insufferable  moment  draws  nigh,  knows 
that  it  is  God's  will  that  his  idol  shall  be  broken,  and  bends 
his  head,  and  subdues  his  soul  to  the  sentence  he  cannot 
avert  and  scarce  can  bear. 

As  she  confessed  later,  it  was  dreary  work  after  that : 
the  only  persons  in  the  world  who  understood  her 
were  no  more.  And  how  lonely  the  lonely  moors ! 
how  still  the  still  house !  how  much  more  like  Death's 
self  the  symbols  of  death  under  the  windows  ! 

So,  when  the  time  for  '  Villette '  came,  it  was  com- 
posed in  a  loneliness  which  cast  long  shadows  across 
the  page.  "I  have  sometimes  desponded  and  some- 
times despaired  because  there  was  none  to  whom  to 
read  a  line,  or  of  whom  to  ask  a  counsel.  '  Jane 
Eyre '  was  not  written  under  such  circumstances,  nor 


Her  Passion  103 

were  two-thirds  of  *  Shirley.'  I  got  so  miserable 
about  it,  I  could  bear  no  allusion  to  the  book."  * 
*'  I  am  now  again  at  home,"  she  writes  Mr.  Williams. 
"  I  call  it  home  still,  much  as  London  would  be  called 
London  if  an  earthquake  would  shake  its  streets  to 
ruins."  ^  "I  used  rather  to  like  Solitude,"  she  makes 
Moore  write,  "  to  fancy  her  a  somewhat  quiet  and 
serious,  yet  fair  nymph ;  an  Oread  descending  to  me 
from  lone  mountain-passes ;  something  of  the  blue 
mist  of  hills  in  her  array,  and  of  their  chill  breeze  in 
her  breath  —  but  much  also  of  their  solemn  beauty  in 
her  mien.  .  .  .  Since  that  day  I  called  S.  to  me  in  the 
school-room  .  .  .  since  that  hour  I  abhor  Solitude. 
Cold  abstraction  - —  fleshless  skeleton  —  daughter — • 
mother  —  and  mate  of  Death!"  That  came  from- 
Charlotte's  heart  of  hearts.  Here  was  a  love  that  went 
down  so  deep  that  its  roots  got  entangled  in  the  deeper 
ones  of  friendship. 

With  the  possibilities  of  ultimate  utter  helplessness 
before  them,  in  the  event  of  the  father's  death,  his 
narrow  stipend  ceasing  with  his  allotted  time  on  earth, 
we  can  easily  imagine  the  desolate  images  of  the 
future  called  up  by  his  continuous  ill-health  in  that 
home  which  was  the  scene  of  so  many  noble  endeav- 
ors. For,  notwithstanding  the  spiritual  barrenness  of 
old  Bronte,  and  the  congenital  dissimilarity  between 
father  and  daughters,  Charlotte's  dutiful  care  of  him 
provided  an  escape  from  intolerable  tedium  ;  and  what 
would  have  become  of  her  had  he  died  before  her? 
And  so  we  have,  as  flowing  from  her,  not  dreary 
experiences  only,  but  still  more  dreary  anticipations, 
the  sadly  realistic  picture  of  the  unmated  which  read- 
ers of  these  novels  will  not  soon  forget.  The  pathetic 
1  Gaskell,  p.  592.  a  Shorter,  p.  201. 


104  Charlotte  Bronte 

portraits  of  Miss  Mann  and  Miss  Ainley  are  what  she 
sees  the  future  has  in  store  for  her.  It  is  not  the 
dread  of  being  a  single  woman,  but  of  being  a  lonely- 
woman,  all  her  life,  that  thrills  her  with  mournful  mus- 
ings, and  discloses  heart-burning  disquietudes.  After 
she  feels  that  she  is  safe  from  the  worst  features  of  a 
solitary  existence,  she  can  write : 

Lonely  as  I  am,  how  should  I  be  if  Providence  had  never 
given  me  courage  to  adopt  a  career  —  perseverance  to  plead 
through  two  long  weary  years  with  publishers  till  they  ad- 
mitted me  ?  How  should  I  be,  with  youth  past,  sisters  lost, 
a  resident  in  a  moorland  parish  where  there  is  not  a  single 
educated  family?  In  that  case  I  should  have  had  no  world 
at  all :  the  raven,  weary  of  surveying  the  deluge,  and  without 
an  ark  to  return  to,  would  be  my  type.  As  it  is,  something 
like  a  hope  and  motive  sustains  me  still.^ 

But  the  raven  came  very  near  to  her,  notwithstanding. 
Well  did  Mrs.  Gaskell  choose,  in  selecting  a  motto  for 
her  fly-leaf,  that  cry  of  Aurora  Leigh, — 

Oh,  my  God, 
.  .  .  Thou  hast  knowledge,  only  Thou, 
How  dreary  't  is  for  women  to  sit  still 
On  winter  nights  by  solitary  fires, 
And  hear  the  nations  praising  them  far  off. 

Now,  these  things  being  so,  is  it  necessary  to  hunt 
for  a  particular  love  experience  in  Brussels  to  account 
for  the  particular  love  story  in  '  Villette '  ?  May  not  the 
outward  and  visible  signs  of  a  known,  be  made,  after 
the  manner  of  symbols,  to  hide  and  mystify  the  in- 
ward and  spiritual  graces  of  an  unknown,  personality? 
The  immense  loneliness  of  a  spirit,  tossed  and  pounded 
on  the  rocks  by  tumultuous  grief,  cried  out  in  the 

1  Shorter,  p.  395. 


Her  Passion  105 

night-time  of  its  desolation,  —  cried  out  from  her  bed, 
her  "  miserable  bed,  haunted  with  quick  scorpions," 
—  cried,  and  "with  no  language  but  a  cry,"  for  the 
natural  life,  which  is  the  reverse  of  loneliness  and 
wreckage, —  the  blessed  life  of  a  home  where  love  is, 
and  her  divine  handmaidens. 


IV 

This,  joined  to  her  unworldliness,  is,  I  believe,  the 
chief  cause  of  the  absence  of  wit  in  her  novels.  Suf- 
fering is  sometimes  the  mother  of  wit,  as  with  Heine; 
but  with  the  more  spiritual  sort  its  bitterness  does  not 
warp  the  mind  into  aphorism.  In  the  old  original  sense 
of  "  Wisdom  "  Charlotte  Bronte  had  wit,  for  that  is  the 
clearest  mark  of  elemental  genius;  but  her  passion 
was  too  deep  and  her  life  too  unspotted  from  the 
world, —  too  simple,  in  a  word,  to  admit  the  worldly 
wisdom  which  we  generally  mean  by  "  wit."  There  is 
a  grim  humor  in  some  of  her  characterizations  (as 
in  Miss  Ainley's  attitude  towards  the  curates,  as  if 
they  were  "  sucking  saints,"  in  contrast  with  her  own 
experimental  knowledge  to  the  contrary) ;  but  she 
could  not  work  up  humorous  situations.  Think  what 
Jane  Austen  would  have  made  out  of  the  encounter  of 
Donne  with  the  dog  Tartar !  There  is  the  gross  ma- 
terial of  humor,  rather  than  the  mined  product.  She 
had  the  capacity  to  realize,  not  the  power  to  develop, 
—  the  sense,  not  the  expression.  The  white  light  of 
her  passion  fills  the  room :  we  cannot  distinguish  the 
furniture. 

I  have  referred  to  Miss  Bronte's  delineations  of 
children  under  the  head  of  her  realism.  There  is 
another  reason  why  they  failed.     The  child  pictures 


io6  Charlotte  Bronte 

are,  no  doubt,  truthful,  unless  her  intensity  unwit- 
tingly deepened  the  colors,  as  intensity  is  liable  to 
do.  Her  favorite  characters,  like  herself,  have  a 
capacity  for  suffering,  and  she  probably  read  some 
of  the  feeling  of  her  own  young  life  into  Polly's, 
making  it  supersensitive  beyond  the  limits  of  com- 
mon experience.  It  was  not  love  for  children  that 
made  her  tender  of  Georgette,  nor  was  it  latent 
motherhood :  it  was  not  the  child  she  loved,  but 
Love.  It  was  a  drop  of  water,  and  she  was  dying 
of  thirst. 

The  truth  is,  children  and  animals  (they  go  to- 
gether) did  not  enjoy  a  natural  place  in  her  thought. 
She  had  to  individualize  too  sharply  or  to  pass  by 
too  carelessly;  and,  although  her  conscience  would 
not  allow  any  slipshod  work,  from  this  painful  lack 
of  vital  concern  there  results  either  a  too  particular 
emphasis  or  a  too  hazy  view.  Contrast  her  descrip- 
tion of  Paul  Emmanuel's  dog  — 

He  .  .  .  gave  many  an  endearing  word  to  a  small  span- 
ieless  (if  one  may  coin  such  a  word)  that  nominally  belonged 
to  the  house,  but  virtually  owned  him  as  master,  being 
fonder  of  him  than  of  any  inmate.  A  delicate,  silky,  loving, 
and  lovable  little  doggie  she  was,  trotting  at  his  side,  look- 
ing with  expressive  attached  eyes  into  his  face  ;  and  when- 
ever he  dropped  his  bonnet-grec,  or  his  handkerchief, 
which  he  occasionally  did  in  play,  crouching  beside  it  with 
the  air  of  a  miniature  lion  guarding  a  kingdom's  flag  — 

with  the  picture  of  another  bachelor's  dog,  Bartle 
Masset's  Vixen,  in  '  Adam  Bede  ' : 

The  moment  he  appeared  at  the  kitchen  door  with  the 
candle  in  his  hand,  a  faint  whimpering  began  in  the  chim- 


Her  Passion  107 

ney  corner,  and  a  brown-and-tan-colored  bitch,  of  that 
wise-looking  breed  with  short  legs  and  long  body,  known 
to  an  unmechanical  generation  as  turnspits,  came  creeping 
along  the  floor,  wagging  her  tail,  and  hesitating  at  every 
other  step,  as  if  her  affections  were  painfully  divided  be- 
tween the  hamper  in  the  chimney  corner  and  the  master, 
whom  she  could  not  leave  without  a  greeting. 

"Well,  Vixen,  well  then,  how  are  the  babbies?"  said 
the  schoolmaster,  making  haste  towards  the  chimney  cor- 
ner, and  holding  the  candle  over  the  low  hamper,  where 
two  extremely  blind  puppies  lifted  up  their  heads  towards 
the  light,  from  a  nest  of  flannel  and  wool.  Vixen  could 
not  even  see  her  master  look  at  them  without  painful  ex- 
citement :  she  got  into  the  hamper  and  got  out  again  the 
next  moment,  and  behaved  with  true  feminine  folly,  though 
looking  all  the  while  as  wise  as  a  dwarf  with  a  large  old- 
fashioned  head  and  body  on  the  most  abbreviated  legs. 

See  how  George  Eliot  vitalizes  such  scenes,  —  George 
Eliot,  who,  by  the  way,  would  never  have  employed 
the  word  "  spanieless."  It  is  not  more  than  pretty 
as  it  stands  in  Charlotte  Bronte :  George  Eliot  would 
haye  made  it  beautiful. 

It  may  seem  a  small  matter,  but  it  points  a  moral. 
For  the  absence  of  a  quality  frequently  means  the 
engrossing  presence  of  some  other  quality.  Miss 
Bronte  could  give  only  a  troubled  attention  to  the 
little  comforts  and  enjoyments,  the  straggling  sun- 
shine in  the  corners  of  a  life,  the  joys  of  minor  pos- 
sessions, and  the  pleasures  of  that  abundant  existence 
surrounding  all  mankind.  She  was  absorbed  in  a 
large  passion  which  consumed  the  thought  which 
might  otherwise  have  been  given  to  details. 

She  never  posed  the  passion ;  it  was  hidden  under 
the  mantle  of  fiction.     There  was  no  hysterical  diary 


io8  Charlotte  Bronte 

for  the  literary  executor  to  exploit.  She  was  the 
very  opposite  order  of  being  from  Marie  Bashkirtsefif, 
for  whose  outpourings  she  would  have  expressed  un- 
mitigated scorn.  But  she  suffered  all  the  more  for 
the  penting  up. 

V 

*  Wuthering  Heights  '  is  an  absolutely  unique  book. 
Charlotte  has  been  denominated,  though  foolishly,  the 
foundress  of  the  "  governess  novel."  It  is  quite  im- 
possible to  fit  Emily  into  a  class.  In  the  *  Professor,' 
although  the  narrator  is  seemingly  of  the  male,  we 
know,  before  we  have  turned  a  dozen  pages,  that  the 
author  is  of  the  female,  gender.  Not  so  in  *  Wuth- 
ering Heights,'  where  even  the  oaths  are  men's  oaths 
in  the  mouths  of  men.^  Crimsworth's  "  My  God's  " 
do  not  fool  us  for  a  moment,  and  the  attempt  at  what 
she  doubtless  fancied  distinctly  male  imagery,  as 
when  she  makes  the  professor  repulse  Hypochondria 
"  as  one  would  a  dreaded  and  ghastly  concubine  com- 
ing to  embitter  a  husband's  heart  towards  his  young 
bride,"  are  amusing  failures.  It  was  an  almost  super- 
human task,  indeed,  for  a  woman  like  Charlotte  Bronte 
to  portray  in  the  first  person  her  idea  of  masculine 
power,  the  unconscious  subtle  essence  of  her  woman- 
hood almost  of  necessity  changing  the  value  of  the 
paints.     The  result  is,  as  I  have  suggested  before,  an 

*  There  are  many  instances  of  women  authors  sinking  their  iden- 
tity so  successfully  as  to  completely  baffle  the  investigator  of  sex ; 
but  I  know  of  only  one  instance  where  a  male  author  has  metamor- 
phosed himself  into  the  female  narrator  of  his  story  with  such  con- 
summate charm  as  to  cause  the  reader  to  rub  his  eyes  and  ask  if  it 
be  possible  that  a  man  could  have  written  thus.  I  refer  to  the  *  Sir 
Percival '  of  Mr.  Shorthouse. 


Her  Passion  109 

evidence  of  her  genius ;  for  with  a  lesser  writer  the 
altered  values  would  have  negatived  the  portrait  into 
colorlessness :  with  her,  the  genius  burnt  through  the 
crudities,  and  merely  heightened  the  colors  beyond 
their  proper  tones.^ 

Emily's  masterpiece  is  without  type,  and  yet  it 
swells  with  form.  It  is  pure  insight,  of  imagination 
all  compact;  and  its  revelation  is  of  the  lightning's 
flash.  It  sweeps  like  a  tornado,  it  burns  like  a 
sirocco.  To  this  wonderful  vestal,  as  icy  pure  as 
Artemis,  came  the  most  terrible  vision  of  mortal  love 
ever  vouchsafed  to  human  genius.  In  all  likelihood 
she  knew  nothing  of  Goethe's  "elective  affinities;  " 
yet  here  they  are  in  this  marvellous  book.  Just  as 
in  nature  a  power  inherent  in  atoms  will  cause  two 
of  differing  natures  to  rush  together  to  form  a  new 
combination,  so  in  human  nature  do  the  spirits  "  rush 
together  "  by  the  compulsion  of  a  similar  mysterious 
force.  That  is  Love,  glittering,  transcendent;  and  it 
is  not  the  chemical  purity  of  the  idea  which  makes 
'  Wuthering  Heights '  a  dreaded  book,  that  being 
more  or  less  dimly  recognized  in  all  truly  noble  love 
stories ;  but  it  is,  besides  the  dazzling  conception  of 
this  analogy,  —  dazzling  things  being  painful  things, 
—  the  milieu  which  offends.  Had  the  dramatis  per- 
soncB  been  of  the  familiar  types,  the  "  elective  affini- 
ties "  would  have  accomplished  their  predestined 
ends  without  any  jar  or  smoke.     But  precisely  be- 

1  I  feel  that  it  is  a  little  unfair  to  criticise  the  '  Professor,'  as  Miss 
Bronte  did  not  authorize  its  publication.  We  have  it,  however,  and 
no  Bronte  lover  is  other  than  glad,  for,  notwithstanding  its  evident 
mistakes,  it  contains  some  of  Currer  Bell's  best  work.  Nay,  its  errors 
emphasize  the  growth  of  her  powers,  as  seen  in  the  subsequent  vol- 
umes. The  chief  error  is  due  to  this  attempt  at  emptying  herself  into 
a  male  consciousness,  —  an  impossible  feat  for  such  a  woman. 


no  Charlotte  Bronte 

cause  that  is  a  common  occurrence,  it  behooved  this 
terrible  virgin  to  set  the  atoms  free  in  an  opposing 
atmosphere,  to  show  inevitable  passion  clashing 
against  inevitable  fate,  and  on  characters  the  most 
unfitted  to  control  their  natures  torn  by  the  con- 
flicting powers.^ 

The  wildest  Yorkshire  gapes  in  the  story ;  the  at- 
mosphere is  of  the  unconquerable  moors :  but  Heath- 
cliff  and  Catherine  are  not  of  that  or  any  other  special 
earth,  but  of  the  universal.  The  reason  for  not 
marrying  Heathcliff  is  given  in  Catherine's  statement 
of  this  strongly  felt  "  affinity  "  : 

"  I  Ve  no  more  business  to  marry  Edgar  Linton  than  I 
have  to  be  in  heaven  ;  and  if  the  wicked  man  in  there  had 
not  brought  Heathcliff  so  low,  I  should  n't  have  thought  of 
it.  It  would  degrade  me  to  marry  Heathcliff  now ;  so  he 
shall  never  know  how  I  love  him  ;  and  that,  not  because  he  's 
handsome,  Nelly,  but  because  he  's  more  myself  than  I  am. 
Whatever  our  souls  are  made  of,  his  and  mine  are  the  same  ; 
and  Linton's  is  as  different  as  a  moonbeam  from  lightning, 
or  frost  from  fire." 

It  is  her  purpose  to  make  this  very  clear. 

"  I  cannot  express  it :  but  surely  you  and  everybody  have 
a  notion  that  there  is  or  should  be  an  existence  of  yours 
beyond  you.     What  were  the  use  of  my  creation  if  I  were 

^  The  nearest  approach  to  such  a  "  possession  "  by  the  "  affinities  " 
since  Miss  Bronte's  day  that  I  have  met  with  is  Mr.  Phillips'  passage 
in  '  Paola  and  Francesca ' : 

"  O  God,  Thou  seest  Thy  creatures  bound 
Together  by  that  law  which  holds  the  stars 
In  palpitating  cosmic  passion  bright ; 
By  which  the  very  sun  enthrals  the  earth, 
And  all  the  waves  of  the  world  faint  to  the  moon. 
Even  by  such  attraction  we  two  rush 
Together  through  the  everlasting  years." 


Her  Passion  1 1 1 

entirely  contained  here  ?  My  great  miseries  in  this  world 
have  been  Heathcliff 's  miseries,  and  I  watched  and  felt  each 
from  the  beginning :  my  great  thought  in  living  is  himself. 
If  all  else  perished  and  he  remained,  /  should  still  continue 
to  be  ;  and  if  all  else  remained,  and  he  were  annihilated,  the 
universe  would  turn  to  a  mighty  stranger  :  I  should  not  seem 
a  part  of  it.  My  love  for  Linton  is  like  the  foliage  in  the 
woods :  time  will  change  it,  I  'm  well  aware,  as  winter 
changes  the  trees.  My  love  for  Heathcliff  resembles  the 
eternal  rocks  beneath :  a  source  of  little  visible  delight,  but 
necessary.  Nelly,  I  am  Heathcliff !  He  *s  always,  always 
in  my  mind ;  not  as  a  pleasure,  any  more  than  I  am  always 
a  pleasure  to  myself,  but  as  my  own  being." 

Love  is  not  really  blind.  If  it  does  not  seem  to  see 
faults,  it  is  because  it  sees  through  them.  Catherine 
knew  HeathclifT's  faults  well  enough,  and  with  the 
usual  Bronte  genius,  her  creator  avoided  that  error 
of  minor  writers,  of  covering  a  lover's  perceptions  as 
with  a  mantle,  presumably  on  the  theory  that  love  is 
a  form  of  insanity.  There  is  insanity  galore,  one 
might  say,  in  the  wild  talk  of  the  people  of  *  Wuther- 
ing  Heights ;  '  but  they  never  commit  the  supreme 
folly  of  confusing  love  with  ideality,  Catherine  knows 
that  Heathcliff  is  the  reverse  of  anything  good,  and 
she  warns  the  infatuated  Isabella  against  him. 

"  I  would  n't  be  you  for  a  kingdom,  then ! "  Catherine 
declared  empathically ;  and  she  seemed  to  speak  sincerely. 
"  Nelly,  help  me  to  convince  her  of  her  madness.  Tell  her 
what  Heathcliff  is  :  an  unreclaimed  creature,  without  refine- 
ment, without  cultivation  :  an  arid  wilderness  of  furze  and 
whinstone.  I  'd  as  soon  put  that  little  canary  into  the  park 
on  a  winter's  day,  as  recommend  you  to  bestow  your  heart 
on  him  !     It  is  deplorable  ignorance  of  his  character,  child, 


1 1 2  Charlotte  Bronte 

and  nothing  else,  which  makes  that  dream  enter  your  head. 
Pray  don't  imagine  that  he  conceals  depths  of  benevolence 
and  affection  beneath  a  stern  exterior  !  He  's  not  a  rough 
diamond  —  a  pearl-containing  oyster  of  a  rustic :  he  's  a 
fierce,  pitiless,  wolfish  man.  I  never  say  to  him,  *  Let  this 
or  that  enemy  alone,  because  it  would  be  ungenerous  or  cruel 
to  harm  them;'  I  say,  'Let  them  alone,  because  /  should 
hate  them  to  be  wronged ; '  and  he  'd  crush  you  like  a 
sparrow's  egg,  Isabella,  if  he  found  you  a  troublesome 
charge.  I  know  he  could  n't  love  a  Linton ;  and  yet  he  'd 
be  quite  capable  of  marrying  your  fortune  and  expectations  : 
avarice  is  growing  with  him  a  besetting  sin.  There  's  my 
picture  :  and  I  'm  his  friend  —  so  much  so  that,  had  he 
thought  seriously  to  catch  you,  I  should  perhaps  have  held 
my  tongue  and  let  you  fall  into  his  trap." 

This  was  not  jealousy,  but  downright  friendliness 
and  truthfulness,  and  the  good  Mrs.  Dean  confirms 
it,  —  not  that  it  needs  confirmation  to  any  who  read 
Heathcliff's  history. 

But  the  point  is  that,  notwithstanding  all  this 
damnatory  evidence,  she  loves  him,  and  he,  her. 
It  is  a  pure  love,  too,  and  there  lies  the  wonder  of  it, 
—  a  chemically  pure  passion.  It  is  not  the  love  of 
the  classics,  for  that  was  passion  of  the  baser  sort,  and 
impure.  There  is,  on  the  contrary,  no  plotting,  no 
contrivance  of  lust,  in  the  design.  The  affinities 
clash,  and  the  horrid  turmoil  of  the  book  is  the 
noise  of  the  clashing;  but  why  do  they  clash?  Be- 
cause they  meet  moral  law.  They  dash  against  it  as 
the  sea  against  a  rock-bound  coast;  but  the  coast  is 
safe.  The  story  is  thus  no  picture  of  immorality, 
using  that  word  in  its  customary  narrow  sense:  were 
it  merely  that,  it  would  not  have  its  supreme  claim 
upon  our  consideration. 


Her  Passion  113 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  Christian  love,  either, 
for  it  cannot  be  used  by  way  of  illustrating  the 
thirteenth  chapter  of  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians.    The  idea  of  Christian  knighthood  — 

I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much 
Loved  I  not  honor  more  — 

is  necessarily  absent.  It  is  love,  neither  pagan  nor 
Christian;  simply  the  chemical  situation  in  its  direct 
form,  common  in  all  ages  and  creeds.  It  is  the  essence 
of  love  —  love  hi  esse — but  not  love  refined  by  Chris- 
tianity ;  the  mother  liquor,  not  the  developed  potency. 
It  is  not  immoral,  but  un-moral ;  not  anti-Christian, 
simply  non-Christian.  Pagan  love  is  really  not  love  at 
all ;  Christian  love  is  love  clarified.  This  is  love's  sub- 
stance, fulfilling  essential  laws.  It  is  pure  passion,  not 
passionate  impurity,  —  a  new  thing,  not  to  be  found 
in  Shakspere,  and  a  great  and  immortal  conception. 

The  book  has  caused  grave  misgivings,  and  even 
Charlotte,  in  her  beautiful  preface,  doubts  its  tendency. 
Ought  such  books  to  be  written?  it  is  asked.  Ought 
it  to  thunder  and  lighten?  No,  they  ought  not  to  be 
written  except  by  Emily  Brontes.  The  like  of  it 
never  was,  is  not,  and  never  will  be  until  a  new  Emily 
Bronte  appears.  Until  then  we  need  have  no  anxie- 
ties, for  neither  the  class  that  gloats  over  d'Abruzzio 
nor  the  class  that  gapes  over  Marie  Corelli  will  ever 
be  attracted  by  it. 

The  author  extends  the  picture  beyond  death. 
Catherine,  dying,  believes  that  when  HeathcHff  suffers 
she  will  suffer,  too,  he  on  the  earth,  she  under  ground. 
Heathcliff  was  in  her  soul ;  and  his  torture  following 
is  because  of  this  separation.  Yet  the  revelation 
made  to  him  after  her  death  proves  that  her  spirit 

8 


114  Charlotte  Bronte 

lingers  still  on  the  earth  awaiting  his,  that  they  may 
depart  together,  even  as  their  bodies  will  melt  into 
one  in  the  one  grave  which  he  has  ordered.  This 
teasing  presence,  driving  Heathclifif  mad  because  of 
its  insubstantiability,  may  not  be  a  comforting  thought 
to  the  reader,  but  it  is  better  than  Catherine's  of 
suffering  in  the  grave;  and  as  it  comes  as  a  revela- 
tion to  the  man  after,  as  if  to  contradict  that  belief  of 
the  woman  before,  death,  it  may  stand  as  the  final 
earthly  stage  in  the  history  of  the  "affinities."^ 

Charlotte  had  this  thought  of  possession,  too ;  it  is 
a  part  of  the  family  inspiration ;  it  is  a  gleam  of  genius, 
inexplicable,  heaven-sent.  "  Nelly,  I  am  Heathcliff !  " 
It  is  the  apotheosis  of  passion ;  and  the  passion 
is  not  as  it  is  vulgarly  conceived,  —  not  in  its 
popular  secondary  sense,  —  but  is  the  apotheosis  of 
law.  The  law  has  its  fullest  play  in  the  hardest  of 
circumstances :  hence  the  passion,  which  means 
suffering. 

That  is  not  all.  The  statement  often  made  that 
there  is  no  gleam  of  light  in  this  dark  book,  nothing 
but  gloom  and  despair,  —  no  heaven  above  its  hell,  — 
is  carelessly  wrong.  The  awakening  of  a  rational 
affection  between  the  younger  Catherine  and  Hareton, 
as  the  story  closes,  is  all  the  more  beautiful  because 
of  the  preceding  horrors.  Emily's  genius  was  not  in 
the  least  like  Poe's  or  Hoffmann's ;  its  nearest  relative, 
out  of  her  own  family,  in  literature,  is  Hawthorne. 
There  was  no  delight  in  her  working  over  the  horrors ; 

^  Mrs.  Ward,  in  her  brilliant  introduction  to  '  Wuthering  Heights,' 
traces  its  "  horrors  "  to  German  Romantic  influences.  It  may  be  so,  in 
part.  Yet  there  is  the  same  essential  difference  between  Emily  and 
Hoffmann  that  there  is  between  Charlotte  and  George  Sand  ;  and  the 
mystery  of  the  primal  power  of  each  sister  is  left  unsolved  by  the 
discussion,  which  covers  rather  accidents  than  fundamentals. 


Her  Passion  115 

their  depiction  was  not  a  tour  de  force.  They  were 
simply  the  result  of  the  conflict  of  the  warring  powers 
in  her  theme.  They  did  not  exist  of  or  for  them- 
selves. And  although  the  intensity  of  their  portrayal 
causes  them  to  remain  in  the  memory  after  other 
things  are  forgotten,  we  should  remember,  too,  that 
Heathcliff's  hate  against  the  Earnshaws  is  in  the  end 
defeated  by  this  same  love  which  has  haunted  him 
throughout  the  years,  "  It  will  be  odd  if  I  thwart  my- 
self," he  muttered ;  "  but  when  I  look  for  his  father 
in  his  face,  I  find  her  every  day  more."  The  close 
of  the  book  is  the  Victory  of  Love.  Heathcliff  saw 
in  that  love  a  fresh  picture  of  his  own,  and  dies  with 
it  on  his  vision.  He  dies  in  a  strange,  weird  happi- 
ness ;  and  the  peaceful  sunset  presages  a  beautiful 
dawn  for  those  who  remain.-' 

1  The  author  of  '  Wuthering  Heights  '  is  remembered  also  because 
of  those  valiant  lines  which  ring  yet  their  iron  cadences : 

No  coward  soul  is  mine, 
No  trembler  in  the  world's  storm-troubled  sphere. 


Vain  are  the  thousand  creeds 
That  move  men's  hearts  :  unutterably  vain ; 

Worthless  as  withered  weeds 
Or  idlest  froth  amid  the  boundless  main. 

There  is  not  room  for  Death 
Nor  atom  that  his  might  could  render  void  ; 

Thou  — THOU  art  Being  and  Breath, 
And  what  Thou  art  may  never  be  destroyed. 

Some  of  Anne's  verses  may  be  found  in  old-fashioned  "  Evangelical " 
hymnals.  Charlotte's  are  forgotten.  It  is  strange  that  one  possessed 
of  such  a  lyrical  gift  should  not  have  naturally  taken  to  its  supreme 
form;  but  so  it  was.     Emily  was  the  only  poet  in  the  family. 

Mr.  Bronte's  account  of  the  answers  of  the  children  to  his  test 
questions  at  a  time  when  Emily  was  not  over  five  years  old,  fits  in 
with  the  character  as  we  know  it  later.  The  question  put  to  her  was 
what  the  father  should  do  with  Bramwell  when  he  was  naughty,  and 
her  answer  was :  "  Reason  with  him,  and  when  he  won't  listen  to 
reason,  whip  him."     [Gaskell,  p.   59.]     "  She  should   have  been  a 


1 1 6  Charlotte  Bronte 

"  Nelly,  I  am  Heathcliflf."  I  have  said  that  Char- 
lotte had  this  sense  of  possession  also,  and  I  take  it, 
as  exemplified  in  both  the  sisters,  to  be  a  spark  of  the 
vital  fire.  Observe  how  often  Charlotte  uses  the 
word  *•  suit"  in  this  complementary  sense  of  chemical 
force.  In  'Shirley'  alone  it  occurs  at  least  a  dozen 
times.  Louis  Moore  notes  that  CaroHne  would  suit 
Robert  with  her  lamb-like  ways  ;  his  wife  must  have 
something  of  the  leopardess  in  her.  Of  Shirley  he 
thinks :  "  If  I  were  king,  and  she  the  house-maid  that 
swept  my  palace  stairs,  across  all  that  space  be- 
tween us  my  eye  would  recognize  her  qualities  ;  a 
true  pulse  would  beat  for  her  in  my  heart,  though  an 
unspanned  gulf  made  acquaintance  impossible."  "  It 
delights  my  eye  to  look  on  her :  she  suits  me,"  is  the 
summing  up.  Even  to  serve  a  passing  whim  the 
word  ministers  to  the  same  idea.  When  Martin 
ruminates  over  his  proposed  adventure  with  Caroline, 
he  finds  its  justification  thus :  "  If  she  behaves  well 
and  continues  to  suit  me,  as  she  has  suited  me  to-day, 
I  may  do  her  a  good  turn."  Again  :  "  Well  did  Mr. 
Yorke  like  to  have  power  and  use  it:  he  had  now 
between  his  hands  power  over  a  fellow-creature's  life : 
it  suited  him."  Louis  Moore,  in  writing  down  the 
scene  of  his  proposal,  says  that  Shirley  bade  him  rise 
from  his  knees.  "  I  obeyed :  it  would  not  have 
stated  me  to  retain  that  attitude  long."  Robert  com- 
forts Caroline  with  the  assurance  that  he  feels  that 
his  mother-in-law  and  he  will  suit.    L,ou'is/eels  Shirley 

man,  a  great  navigator,"  said  M.  Heger.  She  was  a  great  navigator, 
and  only  a  girl.  To  think  she  scarcely  received  a  word  of  praise  for 
this  I  Sydney  Dobell's,  as  I  have  said,  was  the  first.  But  it  came 
after  the  moors  had  ceased  to  weave  their  magic  webs  over  tlieir 
virgin  slave.  And  oh,  the  pity  of  it,  my  brothers  ! 
No  coward  soul  was  thine,  thou  bright,  brave  Vestal  of  the  moors  I 


Her  Passion  117 

"  in  every  sentient  atom  of  his  frame.**  That  is  the 
crowning  glory  of  the  love  of  Rochester  and  Jane. 
"  You  are  my  sympathy,"  he  says.  "  My  bride  is 
here,"  he  says,  "  because  my  equal  is  here  and  my 
likeness."  "Jane  suits  me:  do  I  suit  her?"  he  asks. 
"  To  the  finest  fibre  of  my  nature,  Sir."  That  is  one 
of  the  subtlest  passages  in  English  literature.  The 
eight  words  are  an  octave  of  perpetual  delight,  for 
they  peal  ever  joyous,  ever  true,  to  the  inward  sense 
of  the  Eternal  Fitness. 


VI 

Her  religious  faith  stands  half-way  between  the 
independence  of  Emily  and  the  piety  of  Anne.  She 
conformed  more  to  the  ecclesiastical  requirements 
and  traditions  than  Emily,  who  would  not  teach  in 
the  Sunday-school ;  but  hers  was  not  that  perfect 
peace  which  passeth  understanding,  and  under  whose 
mantle  the  gentle  Anne  rested.  Emily  bore  her  fate 
with  fortitude;  Anne,  hers  with  resignation;  Char- 
lotte, hers  with  a  mixture  of  the  two.  Emily  was 
unflinching,  Anne  was  patient,  Charlotte  was  both. 
Christianity  did  not  possess  her  as  it  did  Anne ;  on 
the  other  hand,  she  was  not  defiant,  like  Emily.  I 
do  not  think  she  found  much  comfort  in  her  religion, 
for  the  Anglican  faith  of  her  day  was  of  a  somewhat 
barren  substance.  She  did  not,  at  least,  get  the  com- 
fort out  of  it  which  Eug6nie  de  Gu6rin  got  out  of  her 
faith,  although  the  outward  conditions  of  their  lives 
were  somewhat  similar.  The  "  Evangelical  Counsels  " 
are  not  prominently  preached  in  "  Evangelical "  cir- 
cles ;  and  the  Frenchwoman  found  in  objective  "  good 
works  "  a  vent  for  subjective  distress. 


1 1 8  Charlotte  Bronte 

But  Miss  Bronte  was  not  really  "  Evangelical "  in 
the  partisan  sense.  She  confesses,  in  '  Villette,'  that 
she  sees  no  essential  difference  between  Lutheranism, 
Presbyterianism,  and  Episcopacy ;  and  neither  did 
the  judicious  Hooker,  for  that  matter.  "I  smile  at 
you  again,"  she  writes,  — 

I  smile  at  you  again  for  supposing  that  I  could  be  an- 
noyed by  what  you  say  respecting  your  religious  and  philo- 
sophical views ;  that  I  could  blame  you  for  not  being  able, 
when  you  look  amongst  sects  and  creeds,  to  discover  any 
one  which  you  can  exclusively  and  implicitly  adopt  as  yours. 
I  perceive  myself  that  some  light  falls  on  earth  from  heaven 
—  that  some  rays  from  the  shrine  of  truth  pierce  the  dark- 
ness of  this  life  and  world,  but  they  are  few,  faint,  and 
scattered,  and  who  without  presumption  can  assert  that  he 
has  found  the  only  true  path  upwards?^ 

Lucy  Snowe  had  no  desire  to  turn  Paul  Emmanuel 
from  the  faith  of  his  fathers,  although  we  know  what 
she  thought  of  that  faith :  "  I  thought  Romanism 
wrong,  a  great  mixed  image  of  gold  and  clay;  but  it 
seemed  to  me  that  tJiis  Romanist  held  the  purer 
elements  of  his  creed  with  an  innocency  of  heart 
which  God  must  love," 

Such  an  honest-thinking  woman  could  not  assume 
an  air  of  dilettante  coquetry  with  such  phases  of  belief 
as  appeal  to  the  aesthetic  rather  than  the  rational  facul- 
ties. The  splendor  of  Rome  did  not  dazzle  those 
clear  eyes.  She  was  not  impervious  to  the  incense; 
but  she  saw  the  loose  morality,  the  conniving  at  lies, 
the  net  of  involved  spiritual  complexities,  on  the  other 
side  of  it  all.  She  was  not  narrowly  prejudiced 
against  the  Roman  Catholic  religion;  but  the  Anglo- 

1  Shorter,  p.  389. 


Her  Passion  1 1 9 

Saxon  in  her  revolted  against  the  maudlin  elements 
of  that  faith  which  were  evident  to  her ;  and  she  could 
not  reconcile  the  indirect  and  sometimes  dishonest 
means  employed  to  bring  about  desirably  good  re- 
sults, with  her  inherited  and  instinctive  open,  honest, 
and  direct  methods.  It  was  not  so  much  a  hatred  as 
it  was  a  contempt  for  what  seemed  to  her  Yorkshire 
independence  blank  idolatry.  "They  are  at  their 
idolatrous  messe,"  she  writes.  The  resounding  glory 
oi seciirus  judical  orbis  terrarum,  which  awoke  convert- 
ing echoes  in  Newman's  heart,  was  as  a  tinkling 
cymbal  in  her  ear, —  the  "circle  of  the  earth"  being 
construed  in  her  tongue  into  "  the  ruddy  old  lady  of 
the  seven  hills." 

Yet  she  was  no  partisan  of  a  persecuting  sect,  going 
about  with  its  detestable  Procrustean  furniture.  Her 
fancy  was  free  enough  to  make  grave  heads  shake  on 
orthodox  shoulders.  She  did  not  take  everything  on 
faith.  She  makes  Shirley  charmingly  non-committal 
on  the  vexed  subject  of  the  Athanasian  creed,  and 
she  condemns  this  symbol,  in  propria  persona  as,  "  pro- 
fane." 1  That  her  dislike  of  Rome  is  not  an  exclusive 
prejudice  is  shown  by  the  similarity  she  makes  Lucy 
Snowe  discover  between  the  little  book  which  Paul 
Emmanuel  has  put  in  her  desk  for  her  spiritual  com- 
fort and  "  certain  Wesleyan  Methodist  tracts  I  had 
once  read  when  a  child ;  they  were  flavored  with 
about  the  same  seasoning  of  excitation  to  fanaticism." 
She  judged  the  religion  by  the  lives  of  the  people 
who  professed  it,  having  the  highest  authority  for  the 
application  of  the  test.  Unfortunately,  this  condemns 
the  Protestants,  too. 

Charlotte  had  plenty  of  that  most  uncommon  sense 

1  Shorter,  p.  407. 


I20  Charlotte  Bronte 

known  as  common.  Emily  obstinately  refused  all 
medicines,  as  though  they  interfered  with  her  friend, 
Nature.  Charlotte  was  willing  to  try  homoeopathy,  to 
save  her  sister's  life.  Emily  rejected  society;  Char- 
lotte submitted  to  its  tortures.  There  was,  too,  as  a 
beautiful  adjunct  to  this  (and,  indeed  I  think,  it  is 
naturally  joined  to  a  true  common-sense)  a  simple- 
mindedness  which  a  careless  reader  of  her  life  might 
not  apply  to  her. 

No  one  will  gather,  I  hope,  from  what  I  have  said 
on  this  subject,  that  Miss  Bronte  was  not  what  is 
usually  called  "  an  earnest  Christian,"  for  that  would 
be  doing  an  injustice  to  a  conscientious  follower  of 
right  paths  as  construed  in  the  pre-eminently  Christian 
sense.  Truly,  she  has  the  intense  feminine  idea  of 
what  the  right  path  is :  "  The  right  path  is  that  which 
necessitates  the  greatest  sacrifice  of  self-interest,  which 
implies  the  greatest  good  to  others."  ^  The  cautious 
male  moralist,  while  applauding  the  last  half  of  this 
definition,  would  amend  the  first  half  by  inserting  the 
word  "  sometimes,"  for  he  would  be  bound  to  acknowl- 
edge that  certain  self-interests  may  accomplish  more 
good  than  their  sacrifice. 

She  passionately  held  that  domestic  endearments 
are  the  best  things  in  the  world.  Her  piety  was  suffi- 
ciently "  orthodox,"  but  was  not  of  the  kind  which 
blinds  either  the  level  gaze  of  common-sense  or  the 
pure  sight  of  other  than  heavenly  visions, —  unless  the 
visions  of  a  home  where  love  is  are  also  heavenly. 
The  arguments  of  St.  John  with  Jane  are  of  the  family 
group  of  Romney  Leigh's  with  Aurora, —  the  theme  of 
the  poem,  the  general  pressure  of  social  work  (called 
forth  by  the  bitter  need  of  it)  against  the  individ- 
1  Gaskell,  p.  312. 


Her  Passion  I2i 

ualistic  urgency  of  a  separative  art,  taking  on  more 
familiar  features  in  Miss  Bronte's  hands,  in  that  it  sets 
forth  the  call  on  the  faithful  to  sacrifice  themselves  for 
foreign  missions,  as  opposed  to  the  clear  voice  of  the 
heart  to  stay  at  home.  For  "  art,"  with  Charlotte 
Bronte,  read  "  heart."  Rochester  was  still  in  England : 
foreign  missions  will  remain  foreign  to  her. 

Resignation  is  what  she  teaches;  but  resignation 
is  a  very  different  thing  from  Content.  What  we 
long  for  with  anguished  yearnings,  in  the  "  undis- 
covered country,"  is  Content,  which,  on  earth,  under 
the  name  of  Resignation,  is  merely  a  negative  vir- 
tue too  often,  to  which,  with  hopes  blighted  and 
passions  crushed,  we  cling  with  despair  and  not  with 
patience.  But  to  satisfy,  there  must  be  more  than 
this:  Content  must  be  a  thrilling  force,  a  life-giving 
power.  Then,  indeed,  "  Contentment  will  be  great 
riches."  Resignation  represents  the  pathetic  side  of 
Receptivity,  and  Miss  Bronte's  attitude  towards  it  is 
peculiarly  feminine.  Here  again  theweather  symphony 
chimes  in  with  the  moral  quality.  She  tells  us  in  '  Vil- 
lette,'  that  she  fears  a  high  wind  because  that  de- 
mands a  painful  exertion  of  strength,  "but  the  sullen 
downfall,  the  thick  descent  of  snow,  or  dark  rush  of 
rain  ask  only  resignation."  ^ 

This  resignation  is  the  nearest  she  can  attain  on 
earth  to  the  heavenly  content.  She  is  its  prose-poet. 
The  crucial  struggles  of  her  heroines  are  due  to  the 
ever-present  conflict  with  temptation,  as  Christianly 
conceived.     And  her  Christianity  makes  them  trium- 

1  In  a  letter  from  Anne,  published  in  Hours  at  Home,  August,  1870, 
Emily's  views  on  a  prevailing  east  wind  are  recorded :  "  Emily  con- 
siders it  a  very  uninteresting  wind."  Note  the  personal  touch,  as 
if  the  wind  were  a  neighbor  dropped  in  from  Keighley. 


122  Charlotte  Bronte 

phant.  Only,  not  with  peace.  She  makes  her  fictional 
self  cry  out:  "From  my  youth  up  Thy  terrors  have 
I  suffered  with  a  troubled  mind."  But  she  holds  in 
check  all  rebellious  feelings,  and  the  passion  is  deep 
because  of  the  restraint.  Only,  not  with  peace  !  There 
would  be  less  resignation  if  there  was  more  peace. 
All  the  more  credit,  then,  to  the  valiance  of  the 
struggler. 

But  when  she  rises  above  all  mists  of  earth,  when 
her  wing  flashes  in  the  blue,  skirting  the  dizzy  heights, 
we  see  the  heavens  opened  and  hear  the  heart-beat  of 
the  stars. 

This  hag,  this  Reason,  would  not  let  me  look  up,  or  smile, 
or  hope  ;  she  could  not  rest  unless  I  were  altogether  crushed, 
cowed,  broken-in,  and  broken-down.  According  to  her, 
I  was  bom  only  to  work  for  a  piece  of  bread,  to  await  the 
pains  of  death,  and  steadily  through  all  life  to  despond. 
Reason  might  be  right;  yet  no  wonder  we  are  glad  at 
times  to  defy  her,  to  rush  from  under  her  rod,  and  give  a 
truant  hour  to  Imagination — her  soft,  bright  foe,  our  sweet 
Help,  our  divine  Hope.  We  shall  and  must  break  bounds 
at  intervals,  despite  the  terrible  revenge  that  awaits  our 
return.  Reason  is  as  vindictive  as  a  devil ;  for  me  she 
was  always  envenomed  as  a  stepmother.  If  I  have  obeyed 
her,  it  has  chiefly  been  with  the  obedience  of  fear,  not  of 
love.  Long  ago  I  should  have  died  of  her  ill  usage,  her 
stint,  her  chill,  her  barren  board,  her  icy  bed,  her  savage, 
ceaseless  blows,  but  for  that  kinder  Power  who  holds  my 
secret  and  sworn  allegiance.  Often  has  Reason  turned  me 
out  by  night,  in  mid-winter,  on  cold  snow,  flinging  for  sus- 
tenance the  gnawed  bones  dogs  had  forsaken ;  sternly  had 
she  vowed  her  stores  had  nothing  more  for  me  —  harshly 
denied  my  right  to  ask  better  things.  .  .  .  Then,  looking  up, 
have  I  seen  in  the  sky  a  head  amidst  circling  stars,  of 


Her  Passion  123 

which  the  midmost  and  the  brightest  lent  a  ray  sympathetic 
and  attent :  a  spirit  softer  and  better  than  human  Reason 
has  ascended  with  quiet  flight  to  the  waste,  bringing  all 
round  her  a  sphere  of  air  borrowed  of  eternal  summer ; 
bringing  perfume  of  flowers  which  cannot  fade,  fragrance  of 
trees  whose  fruit  is  life;  bringing  breezes  pure  from  a 
world  whose  day  needs  no  sun  to  lighten  it.  My  hunger 
has  this  good  angel  appeased  with  food,  sweet  and  strange, 
gathered  amongst  gleaming  angels,  garnering  their  dew- 
white  harvest  in  the  first  fresh  hour  of  a  heavenly  day; 
tenderly  has  she  assuaged  the  insufferable  tears  which  weep 
away  life  itself,  kindly  given  rest  to  deadly  weariness, 
generously  lent  hope  and  impulse  to  paralyzed  despair. 
Divine,  compassionate,  succorable  influence !  When  I 
bend  the  knee  to  other  than  God  it  shall  be  at  thy  white 
and  winged  feet  beautiful  on  mountain  or  on  plain. 

Temples  have  been  reared  to  the  sun,  altars  dedicated  to 
the  moon.  Oh,  greater  glory !  To  thee  neither  hands 
build  nor  lips  consecrate ;  but  hearts  through  ages  are 
faithful  to  thy  worship.  A  dwelling  thou  hast,  too  wide  for 
walls,  too  high  for  dome,  —  a  temple  whose  floors  are 
space,  rites  whose  mysteries  transpire  in  presence,  to  the 
kindling,  the  harmony  of  worlds  ! 

Sovereign  complete,  thou  hadst,  for  endurance,  thy 
great  army  of  martyrs ;  for  achievement,  thy  chosen  band 
of  worthies.    Deity  unquestioned,  thine  essence  foils  decay  ! 

This  is  the  very  naked  flaming  soul  of  genius. 
Analysis  is  helpless  in  its  midst.  For  there  is  no 
mechanical  prism,  however  subtly  fashioned,  that  can 
catch  its  fierce  white  light;  no  cunning  chemistry 
that  can  divide  into  spectral  rays  that  light  that  never 
was  on  sea  or  land. 

Like  all  strong  writers,  Miss  Bronte  draws  fre- 
quently from   the   Old   Testament.     "  It  is   like   an 


1 24  Charlotte  Bronte 

encampment  of  the  forest  sons  of  Anak,"  says  Caro- 
line of  Nunnwood.  The  ash  trees  of  this  famed  forest 
are  "  stately  as  Saul,"  a  strange,  strong  simile.  She 
likens  herself  to  Jael,  Sisera  being  her  unbidden 
longings.  We  have  seen  how  she  lays  Eve  under 
contribution.  When  she  saw  Lawrence's  portrait  of 
Thackeray,  her  first  words  were,  "And  there  came 
up  a  lion  out  of  Judah,"  in  characteristic  contrast 
to  her  father,  whose  sole  remark  was  that  it  was  a 
puzzling  head. 

When  she  writes  of  the  sunrise,  whose  "  herald 
breeze  "  fans  the  expectant  traveller's  cheek,  opening 
"  a  clear  vast  path  of  azure,  amid  clouds  soft  as 
pearl  and  warm  as  flame,"  do  we  not  catch  some 
faint  glimpse  of  what  is  meant  by  the  "  outgoings  of 
the  morning  "  ?  —  as  when  perchance,  standing  on  some 
sea-bitten  coast  in  the  gray  interval  preceding  dawn, 
Nature,  sweet  commentator,  unfolds  the  significance 
of  "  the  dew  of  Thy  birth  is  of  the  womb  of  the  morn- 
ing." And  she  is  terrible  when  Nature  sounds  her 
rallying  bugle  call.  When  God  lets  loose  His 
thunder,  when  "  storms  the  welkin  rend,"  she  makes 
us  bow  before  Him  who  maketh  the  clouds  His 
chariot,  who  walketh  upon  the  wings  of  the  wind. 


VII 

When  she  finally  did  marry  Mr.  Nicholls,  did  she 
love  him?  The  most  that  we  can  say  is  that  she 
esteemed  him,  that  she  had  an  affection  for  him.  It 
was  not  an  ideal  marriage,  but  how  many  marriages 
are?  It  was  a  happy  one  in  a  negative  way,  and 
there  is  no  reason   to   suppose  that   it  would   have 


Her  Passion  125 

ceased  to  be  so.  There  was  no  passion  in  it,  nothing 
approaching  the  loves  of  her  fictional  characters. 

Mr.  Shorter  criticises  Mrs.  Gaskell  for  her  treat- 
ment of  Mr.  Bronte;  but  his  own  picture  of  Mr. 
Nicholls  is  not  of  the  most  flattering  sort;  and  Mr. 
Nicholls  was  alive  when  Mr.  Shorter  wrote,  as  was 
Mr.  Bronte  when  Mrs.  Gaskell  wrote,  the  main  point 
in  much  of  the  criticism  against  the  latter.  That  he 
was  tremendously  in  love  with  Charlotte,  there  can  be 
no  doubt ;  what  her  admirers  complain  of  is  the  lack 
of  manliness  in  its  manifestations.  That  is  not  a 
pleasant  picture  of  him,  sullenly  silent,  refusing  to  eat, 
quaking,  white  with  emotion,  before  the  whole  congre- 
gation when  Charlotte  approaches  the  altar  for  the 
sacrament.  No  wonder  the  stern  old  father  called 
him  an  unmanly  driveller,  and  no  wonder  the  ser- 
vants expressed  their  antipathy:  all  the  world  does 
not  love  that  kind  of  a  lover. 

We  will  not  linger  on  the  theme.  He  got  more 
than  his  deserts  in  winning  this  woman  finally,  but 
so  also  would  have  almost  every  other  man :  it  is  not 
every  day  that  a  Robert  Browning  weds  an  Elizabeth 
Barrett.  And  as  she  was  not  unhappy  in  the  out- 
come, we  need  not  be  unduly  disturbed.  What  con- 
cerns us  chiefly,  and  what  we  have  to  give  unceasing 
thanks  for,  is  that  her  matchless  productions  ante- 
dated her  marriage ;  for  I  verily  believe  that  the  day 
she  joined  hands  with  the  Rev.  Mr.  Nicholls  marked 
the  close  of  her  literary  career. 

VIII 

And  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  tragedy  that  just  as 
her   brave   battles  and   bitter   disappointments,   her 


126  Charlotte  Bronte 

biting  memories  and  giant  griefs,  retroceded  a  little 
in  the  light  of  new  interests,  —  that  just  then  her  life 
should  be  transferred  from  the  world  which  she  had 
served  so  well,  in  spite  of  its  buffets,  to  that  other 
world  into  which  her  keen  vision  had  so  often  pene- 
trated before  Death  sealed  those  eloquent  eyes. 
"  Oh,  I  am  not  going  to  die,  am  I?"  she  calls  out 
from  her  bed  of  pain.  Like  Manfred,  about  to  take 
the  fatal  plunge,  she  in  sharpest  contrast  saw  the 
vision  of  actual  life  as  only  actual  death  can  reveal  it: 

Beautiful ! 
How  beautiful  is  all  this  visible  world! 
How  glorious  in  its  action  and  itself  ! 

or  like  Miranda,  with  a  new  world  of  happiness  open- 
ing before  her : 

O  wonder ! 
How  many  goodly  creatures  are  there  here ! 
How  beauteous  mankind  is  !   O  brave  new  world 
That  has  such  people  in  't ! 

She  spake  more  than  any  one  what  she  felt.  Her 
accumulated  sorrows  are  reflected  in  her  work.  Her 
murmurs  against  Fate  are  tempered  by  her  belief  in 
God.  Her  sadness  is  sanctified  by  faith.  The  seem- 
ing paganisms  of  her  earth-worship  rise  finally  through 
the  veil  of  Christian  pantheism  beyond  all  veils  to 
the  right  hand  of  the  Majesty  on  high.  She  bowed, 
she  fell,  she  lay  down,  where  she  bowed  there  she 
fell,  but  under  no  other  hammer  than  the  hammer 
of  her  griefs,  and  fell  to  rise  again.  Hers  was  no 
**  angry  valor  dashing  against  the  awful  shield  of 
God ;"  rather  in  that  shield  do  we  see  reflected  the 
drawn  face  of  a  long-suffering  woman. 


Her  Passion  127 

We  do  not  sit  at  her  feet  to  learn  the  wisdoms  of 
philosophy;  rather  stand  we  by  her  side  and  hold 
her  hand  as  we  would  the  hand  of  a  stricken  sister. 
The  unruffled  genius  of  a  Leonardo  is  not  given  to 
every  one  —  the  delicacy,  the  elevation,  the  serenity, 
which  can  view  this  troublesome  world  with  untroubled 
eyes,  which  can  attain  heights  of  knowledge  without 
any  sense  of  dizziness,  and  which  can  add  to  that 
knowledge  the  abundant  courtesy  of  a  culture  so 
calm  that  it  must  seem  cruel  to  those  toiling  under 
the  Frankenstein  burden.  The  laden  ones  do  not 
reach  that  perfection.  Had  it  come  before  her, 
Charlotte  Bronte  might  have  joined  in  Matthew 
Arnold's  prayer : 

Calm  Soul  of  all  things,  make  it  mine 

To  feel  amid  the  city's  jar 
That  there  abides  a  peace  of  thine 

Man  did  not  make  and  cannot  mar, 

but  it  would  have  been  unanswered ;  the  jar  of  her 
city  —  which  was  the  tumult  of  her  solitude  —  would 
have  shaken  to  its  foundations  such  transcendent 
peace. 

Not  hers  was  the  easy  flow  and  tempered  finesse 
of  Miss  Austen ;  not  hers  the  mastery  of  range  with- 
in George  Eliot's  grasp.  But  for  such  as  value  the 
purity  of  passion,  one  will  forever  shine  in  a  brighter 
light  than  those,  for  the  light  is  the  lustre  eternal  of 
elementary  genius.  There  are  many  greater  novel- 
ists, there  are  some  greater  women  novelists.  But 
even  because  of  this  Charlotte  Bronte's  place  is  all 
the  more  secure,  as  the  greatest  writer  of  pure  passion 
in  the  English  tongue.     And  it  may  be  that  this  has 


I  28  Charlotte  Bronte 

more  undying  fame  in  it  than  to  be  the  greatest 
writer  of  fiction.  Certain  it  is  that  we  shall  never 
have  anything  like  the  Brontes  again  until  like 
genius  mates  with  like  innocence  and  like  loneliness,  — 
such  intensity  of  genius  yoked  with  such  immensity 
of  loneliness,  in  the  virgin  forest  of  innocence. 


GEORGE     ELIOT 

THE   LITERATURE    OF  POWER   AND    THE 
CUP  OF  STRENGTH 


GEORGE    ELIOT 

THE   LITERATURE    OF  POWER   AND    THE 
CUP   OF  STRENGTH 

A.  — HER   RELIGION   AND   PHILOSOPHY 


Every  zealous  and  well-directed  effort  to  sound  the 
deep  stream  of  George  Eliot's  work  must  result  in 
the  discovery  that  the  bed  rock  is  Sympathy;  and 
every  faithful  searcher  for  its  source  will  find  it  arising 
from  the  springs  of  Altruism. 

It  is  not  simple  passion,  as  it  is  with  poor  Charlotte 
Bronte,  but  that  complex  outward  kinship  of  feeling 
which  we  call  ^^wpassion;  and  which,  in  an  intellec- 
tual being  of  the  rarer  sort,  is  not  only  the  deter- 
minant of  moral  activities  but  is,  preceding  such 
activities,  almost  necessarily  the  result  of  high  mental 
effort ;  because  the  natural  tendency  of  rare  intelli- 
gences is  towards  separation  and  aloofness.  Indeed, 
it  appears  that  such  sympathy,  attached  to  a  life  of 
creative  art,  must  be  in  danger  of  collision  with  the 
separative  qualities  of  pure  intellectual  productiveness. 
The  art  is  not  allowed  to  soar  in  its  natural  egoistic 
ether,  chained  as  it  is  by  human  ties  to  human 
nature ;  the  fellow-feeling,  by  its  moral  massiveness,  di- 
recting the  mind  into  channels  which  it  would  not 
otherwise  take,  and  which  run  deeply  charged  with 


132  George  Eliot 

purposes  issuing  from  that  ever-active  source  —  the 
spring  of  the  Social  Good, 

The  mind  of  George  Eliot  thus  worked  in  bondage, 
but  in  a  willing  bondage,  to  a  lofty  ideal,  and  her 
slavery  was  but  the  livery  of  all  thinkers  whose  realism 
is  still  in  some  measure  controlled  by  an  obtruding  sub- 
jective conscience.  It  is  the  untroubled  masters  of 
the  objective  method  —  the  Balzacs  and  Scotts  —  who 
alone  are  free.  Only,  we  must  not  forget  that,  so 
closely  have  ethics  penetrated  to  the  centre  of  art, 
some  kinds  of  servitude  may  be  nobler  than  other 
kinds  of  liberty. 

II 

Two  opposing  contradictory  traits  emerge  from  a 
consistently  intelligent  sympathy:  that  conservatism 
which  is  the  loving  bond  between  us  and  our  past,  the 
threatened  disruption  of  which  fills  us  with  sorrowful 
despair;  and  that  radicalism  which,  true  to  its  name, 
drives  at  the  root  of  these  conservative  emotions. 
But  so  far  from  being  contradictory  in  the  destructive 
sense,  their  contradiction  is  their  mutual  salvation. 
Are  they  not,  to  use  our  author's  own  term,  but  the 
systole  and  diastole  of  human  life?  The  rhythm  of 
life  needs  this  alternating  contraction  and  expan- 
sion, this  swinging  of  an  infinite  pendulum  between  a 
past  and  a  future.  Just  as  the  photographer  produces 
his  positive  result  by  his  negative  bath,  so  does  a  pure 
radicalism  work  on  a  necessary  conservatism.  And 
when  you  consider  that  this  process  which  the  plate 
undergoes  before  the  photograph  shall  be  perfected 
is  sensitization^  you  will  see  that  the  simile  has  not 
been  unwisely  chosen. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy         133 

If  we  think  of  George  Eliot  chiefly  as  a  radical,  we  do 
not  think  of  her  properly.  She  is  an  artist,  and  therefore 
primarily  conservative.  The  home  influences  and  the  in- 
fluences of  Mid-England  scenery  developed  and  height- 
ened the  strong  feeling  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  attitude 
which  she  inherited  from  her  father ;  together  with  a 
tender  sensibility  towards  the  pastoral  beauty  of  her 
native  Warwickshire.  "  But  my  eyes,"  she  says,  in  that 
almost  autobiographical  chapter  *  Looking  Backward,'^ 
"  But  my  eyes  at  least  have  kept  their  early  affection- 
ate joy  in  our  native  landscape,  which  is  one  deep 
root  of  our  national  life  and  language."  And  although 
her  growing  knowledge  revealed  much  of  that  old 
England  of  her  affections  in  the  dissolving  light  of  an 
illusion,  she  insists  that  illusions  have  value.  "  They 
feed  the  ideal  Better,  and  in  loving  them  still,  we 
strengthen  the  precious  habit  of  loving  something  not 
visibly,  tangibly  existent,  but  a  spiritual  product  of 
our  visible  and  tangible  selves."  She  often  smiles, 
she  says  in  this  essay,  at  her  "  consciousness  that 
certairi  conservative  prepossessions  have  mingled 
themselves  .  .  .  with  the  influences  of  our  midland 
scenery,  from  the  tops  of  the  elms  down  to  the  butter- 
cups and  the  little  wayside  vetches." 

To  that  remarkable  man,  Robert  Evans,  carpenter, 
builder,  and  agent  of  farms,  must  we  turn  to  under- 
stand how  much  of  George  Eliot's  conservatism  is 
due  to  descent,  —  to  Robert  Evans  and  to  his  father, 
George  Evans,  likewise  carpenter  and  builder.  The 
father  of  George  Eliot  was  sixteen  years  old  when  the 

1  In  '  Theophrastus.'  "  There  are  bits  in  the  paper  '  Looking 
Backward*  which  are  true  autobiography."  —  'George  Eliot's  Life, 
as  Related  in  her  Letters  and  Journals ;  Arranged  and  Edited  by  her 
Husband,  J.  W.  Cross.'  William  Blackwood  and  Sons,  Edinburgh  and 
London,  1885,  vol.  i.,  p.  4. 


1 34  George  Eliot 

French  Revolution  broke  out ;  and  his  Toryism  was 
largely  a  confirming  result,  on  the  naturally  conserva- 
tive English  mind,  of  the  horrors  of  governmental 
disruption  as  seen  in  the  logical  outcome  in  France. 
Toryism  meant  the  firm  hand  of  Government,  and 
"  Government  "  was  a  religious  symbol  of  peace  and 
continuance  of  order. 

The  habit  of  the  artistic  mind  naturally  conforms 
to  this  system,  and  is  indelibly  fashioned  to  it  by  the 
impressions  of  its  formative  period.  And  the  political 
aspect  of  the  people  is,  with  such  a  temperament,  all 
but  indissolubly  connected  with  the  physical  aspect  of 
the  country  which  the  people  inhabit.  Our  author 
loves  the  old  because  the  people  love  it;  and  she 
never  urges  that  kind  of  newness  which  can  find  no 
nourishment  in  a  cherished  past.  She  is  in  this  re- 
spect, true  to  art;  for  though  art  is  constantly  return- 
ing from  her  creative  flights  with  new  forms,  these 
forms  never  contradict,  if  they  are  really  her  own,  the 
saving  central  ideal  of  beauty,  which  is  simply  truth 
to  the  inward  intuitive  perception  of  proportion  be- 
tween mass  and  outline,  and  to  the  vivifying,  informing 
spirit  which  is  the  inspiring  life  of  the  work.  George 
Eliot  is  a  reformer,  with  the  Social  Good  as  her  ideal ; 
but  her  artistic  perception  restrains  her  innovations 
from  a  noisy  activity.  Her  genius  broods ;  it  is 
meditative. 

She  knew  that  that  old  England  of  her  father's  love 
had  much  of  evil  that  had,  in  her  day,  disappeared. 
Yet  she  loved  it,  too,  because  of  it  she  was  born,  and 
out  of  it  was  she  nourished.  She  would  not  have 
been  what  she  was,  had  it  been  different.  She  shared 
the  common  lot  of  being  the  product  of  a  past,  to 
which,  therefore,  she  owed  reverence. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy         135 

The  times,  I  heard,  had  often  been  bad ;  but  I  was  con- 
stantly hearing  of  bad  times  as  a  name  for  actual  evenings 
and  mornings  when  the  godfathers  who  gave  them  that 
name  appeared  to  me  remarkably  comfortable.  Altogether, 
my  father's  England  seemed  to  me  lovable,  laudable,  full 
of  good  men,  and  having  good  rulers,  from  Mr.  Pitt  on  to 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  until  he  was  for  emancipating  the 
Catholics;  and  it  was  so  far  from  prosaic  to  me  that  I 
looked  into  it  for  a  more  exciting  romance  than  such  as  I 
could  find  in  my  own  adventures,  which  consisted  mainly 
in  fancied  crises  calling  for  the  resolute  wielding  of  domes- 
tic swords  and  firearms  against  unapparent  robbers,  rioters, 
and  invaders,  who,  it  seemed,  in  my  father's  prime  had 
more  chance  of  being  real.  The  morris-dancers  had  not 
then  dwindled  to  a  ragged  and  almost  vanished  rout  (owing 
the  traditional  name  probably  to  the  historic  fancy  of  our 
superannuated  groom)  ;  also,  the  good  old  king  was  alive 
and  well,  which  made  all  the  more  difference  because  I  had 
no  notion  what  he  was  and  did  —  only  understanding  in 
general  that  if  he  had  been  still  on  the  throne  he  would 
have  hindered  everything  that  wise  persons  thought  un- 
desirable. 

Certainly  that  elder  England  with  its  frankly  salable 
boroughs,  so  cheap  compared  with  the  seats  obtained  under 
the  reformed  method,  and  its  boroughs  kindly  presented  by 
noblemen  desirous  of  encouraging  gratitude;  its  prisons 
with  a  miscellaneous  company  of  felons  and  maniacs  and 
without  any  supply  of  water;  its  bloated,  idle  charities; 
its  non-resident,  jovial  clergy ;  its  militia-balloting ;  and 
above  all  its  black  ignorance  of  what  we,  its  posterity, 
should  be  thinking  of  it, —  has  great  differences  from  the 
England  of  to-day.  Yet  we  discern  a  strong  family  like- 
ness. Is  there  any  country  which  shows  at  once  as  much 
stability  and  as  much  susceptibility  to  change  as  ours? 
Our  national  life  is  like  that  scenery  which  I  early  learned 


136  George  Eliot 

to  love,  not  subject  to  great  convulsions,  but  easily  showing 
more  or  less  delicate  (sometimes  melancholy)  effects  from 
minor  changes.  Hence  our  midland  plains  have  never  lost 
their  familiar  expression  and  conservative  spirit  for  me ; 
yet  at  every  other  mile,  since  I  first  looked  on  them,  some 
sign  of  world-wide  change,  some  new  direction  of  human 
labor  has  wrought  itself  into  what  one  may  call  the  speech 
of  the  landscape  —  in  contrast  with  those  grander  and 
vaster  regions  of  the  earth  which  keep  an  indifferent  aspect 
in  the  presence  of  men's  toil  and  devices.  What  does  it 
signify  that  a  liliputian  train  passes  over  a  viaduct  amidst 
the  abysses  of  the  Apennines,  or  that  a  caravan  laden  with 
a  nation's  offerings  creeps  across  the  unresting  sameness  of 
the  desert,  or  that  a  petty  cloud  of  steam  sweeps  for  an 
instant  over  the  face  of  an  Egyptian  colossus  immovably 
submitting  to  its  slow  burial  beneath  the  sand?  But  our 
woodlands  and  pastures,  our  hedge-parted  corn-fields  and 
meadows,  our  bits  of  high  common  where  we  used  to  plant 
the  windmills,  our  quiet  little  rivers  here  and  there  fit  to 
turn  a  millwheel,  our  villages  along  the  coach-roads,  are 
all  easily  alterable  lineaments  that  seem  to  make  the  face 
of  our  Motherland  sympathetic  with  the  laborious  lives  of 
her  children.  She  does  not  take  their  ploughs  and  waggons 
contemptuously,  but  rather  makes  every  hovel  and  every 
sheepfold,  every  railed  bridge  or  fallen  tree-trunk  an  agree- 
ably noticeable  incident ;  not  a  mere  speck  in  the  midst  of 
unmeasured  vastness,  but  a  piece  of  our  social  history  in 
pictorial  writing. 

Our  rural  tracts  —  where  no  Babel-chimney  scales  the 
heavens  —  are  without  mighty  objects  to  fill  the  soul  with 
the  sense  of  an  outer  world  unconquerably  aloof  from 
our  efforts.  The  wastes  are  playgrounds  (and  let  us  try  to 
keep  them  such  for  the  children's  children  who  will  inherit 
no  other  sort  of  demesne)  ;  the  grasses  and  reeds  nod  to 
each  other  over  the  river,  but  we  have  cut  a  canal  close  by ; 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy         137 

the  very  heights  laugh  with  corn  in  August  or  Uft  the 
plough-team  against  the  sky  in  September.  Then  comes  a 
crowd  of  burly  navvies  with  pickaxes  and  barrows,  and 
while  hardly  a  wrinkle  is  made  in  the  fading  mother's  face 
or  a  new  curve  of  health  in  the  blooming  girl's,  the  hills 
are  cut  through  or  the  breaches  between  them  spanned,  we 
choose  our  level,  and  the  white  steam-pennon  flies  along  it. 

But  because  our  land  shows  this  readiness  to  be  changed, 
all  signs  of  permanence  upon  it  raise  a  tender  attachment 
instead  of  awe ;  some  of  us,  at  least,  love  the  scanty  relics 
of  our  forests,  and  are  thankful  if  a  bush  is  left  of  the  old 
hedgerow.  A  crumbling  bit  of  wall  where  the  delicate  ivy- 
leaved  toad-flax  hangs  its  light  branches,  or  a  bit  of  gray 
thatch  with  patches  of  dark  moss  on  its  shoulder  and  a 
troop  of  grass-stems  on  its  ridge,  is  a  thing  to  visit.  And 
then  the  tiled  roof  of  cottage  and  homestead,  of  the  long 
cow-shed  where  generations  of  the  milky  mothers  have 
stood  patiently,  of  the  broad-shouldered  bams  where  the 
old-fashioned  flail  once  made  resonant  music,  while  the 
watch-dog  barked  at  the  timidly  venturesome  fowls  making 
pecking  raids  on  the  outflying  grain  —  the  roofs  that  have 
looked  out  from  among  the  elms  and  walnut-trees,  or  beside 
the  yearly  group  of  hay  and  corn  stacks,  or  below  the  square 
stone  steeple,  gathering  their  grey  or  ochre-tinted  lichens 
and  their  olive-green  mosses  under  all  ministries,  —  let  us 
praise  the  sober  harmonies  they  give  to  our  landscape,  help- 
ing to  unite  us  pleasantly  with  the  elder  generations  who 
tilled  the  soil  for  us  before  we  were  born,  and  paid  heavier 
and  heavier  taxes,  with  much  grumbling,  but  without  that 
deepest  root  of  corruption  —  the  self-indulgent  despair  which 
cuts  down  and  consumes  and  never  plants.  .  .  . 

I  belong  to  the  "Nation  of  London."  Why?  There 
have  been  many  voluntary  exiles  in  the  world,  and  prob- 
ably in  the  very  first  exodus  of  the  patriarchal  Aryans  — 
for  I  am  determined  not  to  fetch  my  examples  from  races 


138  George  Eliot 

whose  talk  is  of  uncles  and  no  fathers  —  some  of  those  who 
sallied  forth  went  for  the  sake  ofa  loved  companionship,  when 
they  would  willingly  have  kept  sight  of  the  familiar  plains, 
and  of  the  hills  to  which  they  had  first  lifted  up  their  eyes. 

"What  George  Eliot  owes  to  her  father  you  may  see 
in  Adam  Bede,  Caleb  Garth,  and  Stradivarius  —  as, 
near  portraiture  as  she  ever  permitted  herself  to  go. 
Moral  firmness,  strength  of  purpose,  conscientious 
painstaking,  faithfulness  to  system,  a  high  intelligence, 
a  mastery  of  details  springing  from  a  thorough  under- 
standing of  their  underlying  principles,  a  keenly  de- 
veloped sense  of  order,  and  a  love  for  hard  work  — 
in  this  she  was  herself  Adam  Bede  and  Caleb  Garth 
and  her  father's  true  child.  And  that  eager  tenderness, 
for  the  country  which  ever  haunted  her  in  her  town  sur- 
roundings was,  in  the  mystic  way  of  such  inheritances, 
a  reflection  of  those  early  attachments  which  are  the 
warp  and  woof  of  a  sensitive  childhood.  An  affec- 
tionate memory  was  intensified  by  its  associations 
with  a  companionship  quite  as  devoted  as  that  of 
Maggie's  with  Tom's  —  another  hint  at  portraiture  — 
and,  we  have  reason  to  believe,  meeting  with  about 
the  same  response.  All  of  that  wonderful  *  Mill  on 
the  Floss '  history  of  childhood  was,  spiritually,  her 
own.  There  is  a  reference  to  her  brother's  share  in 
her  girlhood's  life  in  the  poetical  heading  to  the 
fifty-seventh  chapter  of  '  Middlemarch  ;  *  and  it  shines 
with  a  sweet  radiance  in  her  poem  '  Brother  and 
Sister.* 

Ill 

The  artistic  nature  is  primarily  conservative.  It  is 
also  necessarily  plastic.  And  when  it  is  a  woman's 
nature  it  lacks  the  fuller  ideality  of  a  man's.     George 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       139 

Eliot,  with  all  her  masculine  power,  suffers  in  com- 
pany with  all  of  her  sisters,  from  this  congenital  — 
I  will  not  say  defect,  but  rather  denial  of  nature. 
That  is  perhaps  why  no  women  musicians  of  the  first 
rank  have  as  yet  appeared,  although  at  the  beginning 
of  the  new  century  there  are  indications  that  the  less 
circumscribed  life  of  women  is  beginning  to  find  its  first 
and  finest  response  in  music.  But  in  that  other  kind  of 
composing  which  we  have  here  to  consider,  the  innate 
feminine  love  of  reality,  —  that  is,  love  for  an  isolated 
object  as  the  realization  of  an  ideal  —  seems  destined 
in  the  strongest  of  women  novelists,  to  crowd  out  the 
continued  contemplation  of  the  ideal  itself.  That 
George  Eliot  is  herself  appreciative  of  this  funda- 
mental characteristic  is  demonstrated,  in  her  most 
mature  period,  in  the  picture  of  Dorothea ;  the  in- 
tense pity  of  her  sympathy  with  her  heroine  being 
due  to  that  mysterious  chord  of  feeling  between  two 
sisters  of  the  same  mental  and  spiritual  type.  Hardly 
any  male  author  of  equal  genius  would  have  caused 
that  girl  to  sacrifice  herself  so  needlessly  to  such  a 
pallid  mistake  as  Casaubon.  Reflecting  his  own  ideal- 
ity, just  as  George  Eliot  reflected  her  lack  of  it,  he 
would  have  been  content  to  let  her  linger  hungering 
for  that  ideal  which,  in  her  environment,  she  could 
never  find ;  knowing  that  though  there  be  no  reality, 
the  ideal  has  a  dynamic  force  in  a  "  larger  unity"  than 
can  be  comprehended  in  any  particular  realization. 

I  did  not  mean  to  be  carried  so  far  afield,  however, 
at  this  time,  but  to  point  out  that  the  traits  we  learn 
to  know  as  we  read  her  books  are  evident  in  her 
early  years,  —  the  conservatism,  the  plastic  enthusi- 
asms, and  that  hungering  need  of  realization  which 
stands  in  the  way  of  the  "  larger  unity  "  for  which  she 


140  George  Eliot 

strove.  Her  religious  surroundings  at  school  were 
ultra-Evangelical,  and  she  imbibed  them  as  readily  as 
she  afterwards  did  those  of  the  Westminster  coterie. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  she  recommends,  in  a 
letter  to  Miss  Lewis,^  a  quotation  from  Young,  whom 
she  unsparingly  castigates,  a  little  later,  when  the 
new  influences  are  at  work,  for  the  very  qualities  for 
which  the  quotation  stands  sponsor.  Her  religious 
fervor  at  this  period  was  apparently  able  to  extin- 
guish her  musical  sensibilities,  for  in  a  letter  on  the 
eve  of  her  nineteenth  birthday  she  says,  referring  to 
an  oratorio  lately  heard  at  Coventry,  " .  .  .  it  is  the 
last,  I  think,  I  shall  attend.  .  .  .  It  would  not  cost  me 
any  regrets  if  the  only  music  heard  in  our  land  were 
that  of  strict  worship,  nor  can  I  think  a  pleasure  that 
involves  the  devotion  of  all  the  time  and  powers  of 
an  immortal  being  to  the  acquirement  of  an  expert- 
ness  in  so  useless  (at  least  in  ninety-cases  out  of  a 
hundred)  an  accomplishment  can  be  quite  pure  and 
elevating  in  its   tendency."  ^     She   has  no   soul   for 

1  '  Life'  vol.  i,  p.  42. 

'  lb.,  vol.  i.,  p.  44.  To  say  that  a  book  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes 
carries  with  it  a  shade  of  condemnation.  Mr.  Cross's  '  Life '  is  that 
kind  of  a  book.  What  it  gives  is  valuable ;  what  it  withholds  would 
have  so  added  to  its  value  that  the  reticence  affects  in  some  degree 
the  utterance.  It  is  a  dignified  silence,  and  is  to  that  extent  a  happy 
contrast  to  the  gossipy  volubility  which  too  often  passes  for  biog- 
raphy; but  the  dovetailing  process  in  this  instance  has  conformed  too 
steadily  to  one  standard.  There  is  no  change  of  key,  and  as  the  key 
is  high,  the  effect  is  a  strained  monotony.  The  biographer  suffered 
in  that  his  acquaintance  did  not  date  sufficiently  into  her  early  years  to 
allow  him  to  speak  with  both  authority  and  interest  in  regard  to  them. 
What  skill  the  '  Life  '  has  —  and  that  is  very  considerable  —  is  due  to 
the  affectionate  intelligence  of  an  admiring  husband ;  it  lacks  the 
highest  skill  of  the  trained  writer  and  the  born  biographer.  George 
Eliot's  life  in  its  fulness  has  never  been  written,  nor  can  it  ever  be 
until  the  writer  has  in  his  possession  all  the  letters  which  Mr.  Cross 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       141 

music,  she  says  in  this  letter;  and  yet,  seven  years 
before,  her  music  master  confessed  that  he  had  no 
more  to  teach  her, —  her  enthusiasm  for  the  subject 
being  of  the  kind  reflected  in  her  portrayal  of  Maggie 
Tulliver's  experience  "...  her  sensibility  to  the 
extreme  excitement  of  music  was  only  one  form  of 
that  passionate  sensibility  which  belonged  to  her 
whole  nature,  and  made  her  faults  and  virtues  all 
merge  in  each  other —  made  her  affections  sometimes 
an  important  demand,  but  also  prevented  her  vanity 
from  taking  the  form  of  mere  feminine  coquetry  and 
device,  and  gave  it  the  poetry  of  ambition."     Two 


has  seen  fit  to  omit  from  his  biography,  and  which,  of  course,  if  they 
have  not  already  been  destroyed,  could  be  justifiably  published  only 
with  Mr.  Cross's  permission :  that  time,  we  think,  will  never  come. 
The  student  desirous  of  supplementing  Mr.  Cross's  collection  of 
letters  should  consult,  among  other  matter,  the  correspondence  (pre- 
sumably unknown  to  her  husband)  copied  in  Poet  Lore,  vol.  vi.,  —  some 
of  it  over  the  name  of  '  Clematis,"  given  her  by  a  girl  friend,  and 
appropriately,  for  it  means  'mental  beauty;'  also  Trollope's  'What 
I  remember,'  chapters  xxxiv-v.,  and  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps'  paper 
in  Harper^ s,  vol.  Ixiv.,  p.  568. 

She  herself  said,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Trollope  ['  What  I  Remember,' 
p.  485].  "The  best  history  of  a  writer  is  contained  in  his  writings  : 
there  are  his  chief  actions  ;  .  .  .  biographies  generally  are  a  disease  of 
English  literature."  Her  life,  indeed,  must  be  studied  mostly  through 
her  books,  even  where  it  differs  from  the  books.  Her  father's  family 
were  too  much  estranged  to  have  made  their  testimonies  valuable,  even 
if  most  of  them  had  not  already  passed  away.  Her  intellectual 
friends,  Mr.  Spencer,  Mr.  Harrison,  Mr.  Paul,  the  Coventry  and 
Westminster  groups,  have  contributed  their  moieties,  and  with  that 
we  must  be  content.  Under  the  circumstances,  Mr.  Cross's  book 
must  remain  the  only  authentic  '  Life,'  and  may  always  be  quoted 
without  caveats,  so  far  as  the  actual  facts  are  recorded.  [Since  the 
present  volume  has  been  in  type.  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  has  published  his 
monograph  in  the  English  Men  of  Letter  Series  ['  George  Eliot.'  By 
Leslie  Stephen.  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.  London,  Macmil- 
lan  Co.,  Ltd.  1902].  It  contains  no  new  biographical  facts,  although, 
of  course,  it  is  a  valuable  addition  to  the  criticism  of  the  subject]. 


142  George  Eliot 

years  after  writing  this  renunciatory  letter,  she  is  dis- 
covered at  the  Birmingham  festival  hysterically  sob- 
bing over  the  grand  flow  of  harmonies  ^  ["  The  mere 
concord  of  octaves  was  a  delight  to  Maggie  "]  ;  and 
all  through  her  life  music  was  her  principal  solace 
and  delight.  Her  musical  evenings  were  those 
which  gave  her  the  most  enjoyment,  and  it  was  at  a 
concert  that  she  caught  her  fatal  cold.  She  was  a 
fine  performer  on  the  piano,  and  had  an  exquisite 
taste.  "  I  am  very  sensitive  to  blunders  and  wrong 
notes,  and  instruments  out  of  tune,"  she  says  in  a 
letter  to  Charles  Lewes.^  She  knew  the  piano  well 
enough  to  faint-praise  it  as  a  "  moderately  responsive 
instrument,"  and  she  illustrates  the  virile  power  of  the 
violin  by  the  "  masculine  "  bow.  Castanets  are  likened 
to  "  crickets."  Her  feeling  for  the  nice  shades  of  tone 
between  instruments  is  shown  in  these  one-word 
descriptions,  as  when  she  refers  to  the  ^^  violoncello'^ 
voice  of  Lady  Pentreath.  Indeed,  who  will  ever  for- 
get the  musical  "notes"  in  her  fiction?  There  is 
hardly  a  great  composer  of  whom  she  has  either  not 
had  some  swift  direct  sympathetic  word  to  say,  or  to 
whose  style  some  indirect  word  perfectly  fits.  She 
took  Haydn's  measure,  for  example,  thus: 

"Philip  burst  into  one  of  his  invectives  against  'The 
Creation,'  the  other  day,"  said  Lucy,  seating  herself  at  the 
piano.  "  He  says  it  has  a  sort  of  sugared  complacency 
and  flattering  make-believe  in  it,  as  if  it  were  written  for  the 
birthday  fete  of  a  German  Grand-duke." 

And  does  not  this  describe  the  effect  of  'The 
Messiah'  on  a  appreciative  listener?  — 

1  '  Life '  vol  i.,  p.  44.  '  lb.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  135. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       143 

Caleb  was  very  fond  of  music,  and  when  he  could  afford 
it  went  to  hear  an  oratorio  that  came  within  his  reach, 
returning  from  it  with  a  profound  reverence  for  this 
mighty  structure  of  tones,  which  made  him  sit  meditatively, 
looking  on  the  floor  and  throwing  much  unutterable  language 
into  his  outstretched  hands. 

The  terrible  Klesmer  —  none  but  a  keen  musician 
could  have  painted  the  absolutely  perfect  picture  of 
the  Klesmers  —  must  have  been  criticising  Bellini 
when  he  thundered  at  Gwendolen : 

"That  music  which  you  sing  is  beneath  you.  It  is  a 
form  of  melody  which  expresses  a  puerile  state  of  culture,  — 
a  dandling,  canting  see-saw  kind  of  stuff — the  passion  and 
thought  of  people  without  any  breadth  of  horizon.  There 
is  a  sort  of  self-satisfied  folly  about  every  phrase  of  such 
melody;  no  cries  of  deep,  mysterious  passion  —  no  con- 
flict —  no  sense  of  the  universal.  It  makes  men  small  as 
they  listen  to  it.     Sing  now  something  larger." 

And  it  might  just  as  well  have  been  Wagner  that 
he  sat  down  to  play  as  — 

...  a  composition  of  his  own,  a  fantasia  called  Freud- 
voll,  Leidvoll,  Gedankvoll — an  extensive  commentary  on 
some  melodic  ideas  not  too  grossly  evident ;  and  he  certainly 
fetched  as  much  variety  and  depth  of  passion  out  of  the 
piano  as  that  moderately  responsive  instrument  lends  itself 
to,  having  an  imperious  magic  in  his  fingers  that  seemed  to 
send  a  nerve-thrill  through  ivory  key  and  wooden  hammer, 
and  compel  the  strings  to  make  a  quivering  speech  for  him. 

This  Klesmer,  it  appears, 

.  .  .  was  as  versatile  and  fascinating  as  a  young  Ulysses 
on  a  sufficient  acquaintance  — one  whom  nature  seemed  to 


144  George  Eliot 

have  first  made  generously  and  then  to  have  added  music 
as  a  dominant  power  using  all  the  abundant  rest ;  and,  as 
in  Mendelssohn,  finding  expression  for  itself  not  only  in  the 
highest  finish  of  execution,  but  in  that  fervor  of  creative 
work  and  theoretic  belief  which  pierces  the  whole  future  of 
a  life  with  the  light  of  congruous,  devoted  purpose. 

If  you  have  felt  the  heaviness  of  Meyerbeer,  you 
will  clap  your  hands  at  this: 

"  He  is  a  friend  of  yours,  I  think." 

"  No,  no  ;  an  amateur  I  have  seen  in  town :  Lush,  a  Mr. 
Lush.  Too  fond  of  Meyerbeer  and  Scribe  —  too  fond  of 
the  mechanical-dramatic." 

Listen  to  Schubert's  praise: 

Schubert,  too,  wrote  for  silence :  half  his  work 
Lay  like  a  frozen  Rhine  till  summers  came 
That  warmed  the  grass  above  him.     Even  so ! 
His  music  lives  now  with  a  mighty  youth. 

"  There  is  no  feeling,"  she  says,  "  except  the 
extremes  of  fear  and  grief,  that  may  not  find  relief 
in  music ;  "  and  she  likens  the  love  of  Adam  Bede 
to  "  the  still  rapture  under  the  influence  of  autumn 
sunsets,  or  pillared  vistas,  or  calm  majestic  statues, 
or  Beethoven  symphonies,"  losing  "  itself  in  the  sense 
of  divine  mystery."  Her  finest  similes  are  her  musi- 
cal similes.  Of  Esther's  awakening  she  says,  "  Some 
hand  had  touched  the  chords,  and  there  came  forth 
music  that  brought  tears."  And  how  exquisitely  the 
joyous  pain  of  echoing  sensibilities  to  a  sweet  con- 
vincing song  is  set  forth  in  Mrs.  Meyrick's  plea  for 
Mirah  ! 

"Her  voice  is  just  perfect:  not  loud  and  strong,  but 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       145 

searching  and  melting,  like  the  thoughts  of  what  has  been. 
That  is  the  way  old  people  like  me  feel  a  beautiful  voice." 

This  feeling  for  music  was  for  George  Eliot  the 
high  sublimated  essence  of  the  mingled  joy  and 
sorrow  of  life,  the  "  plash  of  an  oar  in  the  evening 
lake,"  the  "  broken  echoes  of  the  heavenly  choir," 
the  "  strains  that  seemed  to  make  all  sorrows  natural ; " 
a  spiritualizing  energy  and  a  soul  of  peace  dwelling  in 
the  centre  of  a  heart  of  storm.  Finally,  she  empha- 
sizes Mr.  Casaubon's  selfish  seclusion  by  making  him 
confess  to  a  distaste  for  musical  performance.  "  *  I 
never  could  look  on  it  in  the  light  of  a  recreation  to 
have  my  ears  teased  with  measured  noises,'  said  Mr. 
Casaubon." 

And  yet,  under  the  controlling  force  of  a  religious 
impulse,  she  deliberately  denies  the  possession  of  a 
supreme  quality  which  had  been  discovered  years 
before;  so  completely  was  her  plastic  nature  in  the 
grasp  of  that  force.  It  is  an  important  point,  as  it 
touches  a  fundamental  characteristic,  —  her  "  radical- 
ism," which  was  soon  to  supervene,  being  primarily 
due  to  extraneous  influence,  as  was  this  pietistic 
period. 

IV 

In  a  letter  to  Miss  Lewis  under  the  date  of  the 
twelfth  of  August,  1840,^  in  connection  with  a  dis- 
quisition on  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians,  in  which 
she  adopts  with  enthusiasm  the  stereotyped  Calvin- 
istic  term,  "  filthy  rags,"  is  to  be  found  mention  of  the 
first  book  which  had  a  subtile  influence  on  the  un- 

1  '  Life,'  vol.  :.,  pp.  70  seq. 
10 


146  George  Eliot 

settling  of  this  same  Calvinism, — Isaac  Taylor's 
'  Ancient  Christianity ; '  thus  preparing  the  way  for 
the  dominance  of  the  Brays  and  Hennells  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  although  that  would  have  had  its  full 
effect  on  her  under  other  conditions.  It  is  to  be 
noted  in  passing  merely  as  an  interesting  incident 
of  the  accidental  sort,  for  in  the  extensive  list  of  her 
reading  at  this  time  may  be  found  a  large  amount  of 
matter  easily  convertible  into  agnostic  ammunition. 

Hennell's  *  Inquiry,'  probing  into  the  very  origin  of 
the  beliefs  which  she  had  absorbed,  had  a  powerful 
effect  upon  her.  It  was  a  new  kind  of  writing,  a  pre- 
cursor of  the  present  critical  freedom  of  investigation  ; 
and  the  book  was  among  the  first  of  a  large  class  to 
dwell  upon  the  natural  history  of  the  Jewish  people ; 
their  gradual  growth  being  conceived  as  leading, 
along  the  lines  of  evolutionary  order,  and  apart  from 
special  divine  interference,  to  the  production  of  Jesus. 
Christianity  is  traced  to  the  enthusiasm  generated  by 
the  character  and  career  of  Jesus,  followed  by  the 
accession  of  Gentile  converts,  the  absorption  into 
the  new  belief  of  the  prevailing  Greek  philosophy, 
and  the  decay  of  the  old  Olympus;  the  Hebrew 
theocracy  disappearing  in  the  religious  revolution. 
Jesus,  under  the  exalted  inspiration  that  he  was  the 
Messiah  —  as  the  result  of  his  schooling  in  the  Essene 
philosophy,  joined  with  an  ardent  patriotism  — 
preached  the  "  kingdom  of  heaven,"  confident  that 
divine  power  would  make  manifest  his  claim  to 
David's  throne ;  and  his  teaching  changed  as  it 
became  apparent  that  no  such  manifestation  would 
occur;  the  idea  of  a  conquering  Messiahship  now 
appearing  as  a  glory  to  be  reached  only  by  suffering 
and  death.  The  belief  in  the  Resurrection  was,  accord- 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       147 

ing  to  this  view,  based  on  the  actual  disappearance  of 
the  body  of  Jesus,  and  its  preaching  was  allowed  as 
less  harmful  to  the  civic  peace  than  the  claims  of  a 
living  Messiah. 

This  is  the  book  which  entered  George  Eliot's  life 
at  the  time  when  the  influences  which  intensified  her 
Evangelicalism  were  melting  under  the  stronger  in- 
fluences of  rationalistic  beliefs;  and  I  have  dwelt 
upon  the  position  of  the  '  Inquiry '  at  some  length 
to  illustrate  how  easily  a  plastic  nature  may  be 
fashioned  by  the  right  hand  to  new  modes  of  thought 
of  diametric  opposition  to  the  old.  And  while  we 
are  free  to  suppose  that  if  the  religion  of  her  child- 
hood had  been  of  a  more  buoyant,  more  inclusive 
sort,  the  break  with  it  would  have  been  less  severe,  — 
had  there  been  less  of  Hannah  More  in  the  old,  there 
would  have  been  less  of  Herbert  Spencer  in  the  new, 
—  with  her  ready  acquisitiveness,  the  change  was  in 
some  way  destined  to  be  wrought  out  under  any  con- 
ditions; and  the  'Inquiry'  went  home,  backed  by 
constant  intercourse  with  the  Hennell  family.  The 
book  is  remarkable  as  indicating  the  evolutionary 
method  in  the  historical  field  several  years  before  that 
method  was  firmly  established  by  Darwin's  great 
theory.  It  exchanges  a  natural  history  for  a  super- 
natural, and  subjects  miracles  to  the  microscope  of 
reason,  —  a  process  inimical  to  a  belief  which  is  es- 
sentially transcendental.  The  Germans  had  labori- 
ously arrived  at  the  same  conclusions,  and  their  most 
eminent  champion,  Strauss,  thought  so  highly  of 
Mr.  Hennell's  work  that  he  had  it  translated  into  his 
language,  and  wrote  a  commendatory  preface. 

Her  own  translation  of  Strauss  augmented  this 
widening  departure ;  and  the  picture  of  this  enthusi- 


148  George  Eliot 

astic,  delicate  girl  toiling  across  that  fearful  morass, 
faithful  to  her  aim,  but  sick  at  heart  (Strauss-sick,  she 
said  she  was)  with  her  destructive  task,  is,  I  venture 
to  believe,  the  most  pathetic  portrait  in  the  whole  sad 
wilderness  of  mistaken  effort.  ^  Christianity  was  full 
of  poetry  to  her,  with  "  its  Hebrew  retrospect  and 
millennial  hopes;"  and  this  German  Goliath  was  in 
method  and  purpose  the  incarnate  antagonism  of  this 
embodied  poetry.  His  '  Leben '  was  an  epoch-making 
book,  and  every  serious  subsequent  work  on  the  rise 
of  Christianity  bears  some  relation  to  it;  but  the 
abnormal  analytical  development  of  his  mind  de- 
barred him  from  that  synthetic  and  constructive 
sympathy  in  the  atmosphere  of  which  a  spirit  like 
George  Eliot's  must  find  breathing  room  or  die. 
Was  there  ever  another  picture  like  that  of  this 
woman  bending  over  the  dissection  of  "  the  beautiful 
story  of  the  Crucifixion,"  nerved  to  what  she  believed 
to  be  a  duty  in  behalf  of  truth  by  the  image  of  that 
Suffering  Christ  over  her  desk  —  the  image  of  Him 
who  said  He  was  the  truth  —  keeping  her  to  what  she 
thought  was  the  truth  in  widening  the  influence  of  a 
work  destructive  of  that  truth ! 


V 

Do  you  wonder  at  the  change?  Yet  it  is  the  same 
Marian  Evans  we  saw  before,  denying  herself  music 
on  religious  grounds,  and  talking  about  filthy  rags. 
Her  plastic  nature  is  simply  in  another  environment, 
and  is  being  worked  upon  by  other  forces ;  her  pecu- 
liar susceptibility  to  such  forces  being  evidenced  by 

*  The  nearest  approach  to  it  that  I  know  of  is  the  picture  of  Anne 
Bronte  at  work  on  the  '  Tenant  of  Wildfell  Hall.' 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       149 

the  strong  inherent  dissimilarity  between  the  underly- 
ing spiritual  habits  —  so  to  speak  —  of  such  a  man  as 
Strauss,  the  unsympathetic,  the  anti-poetical  and  de- 
structive, and  the  future  author  of  *  Adam  Bede.' 

We  have  no  record  of  the  effect  upon  her  of 
Strauss's  final  word  of  importance  on  religion,  pub- 
lished in  1872;  but  if  she  read  it,  it  must  have  been 
with  regret  at  her  impulsive  connection  with  his  ear- 
lier performance,  for  that  final  word  was  the  word 
of  a  discredited  and  inconsistent  negation,  giving 
offence  even  to  his  scientific  followers  because  of  its 
total  lack  of  spiritual  light  and  because  of  its  credulity. 
This  was  the  outcome  of  the  philosophy  which  moved 
George  Eliot  to  the  painful  task  of  translation,  a  phi- 
losophy opposed  to  all  that  is  best  in  her  own  system 
of  thought.  And  yet  —  consider  the  marvel  —  there 
is  no  more  honest  work  in  the  history  of  literature. 
It  is  the  only  English  translation  of  the  '  Leben,'  and 
it  stands  to-day  unassailed  in  point  of  scholarship. 
Strauss  was  delighted  with  it,  saying  in  his  preface  "  et 
accurata  et  perspicua ;  "  which  reminds  us  of  George 
Eliot's  own  expressed  ideal  in  '  Romola,'  "  accuracy 
the  very  soul  of  scholarship." 

It  should  not  be  supposed  that  because  of  this  plas- 
ticity, there  was  complete  intellectual  submission. 
That  would  have  been  impossible  to  a  mind  charged 
with  a  moral  earnestness  jealous  of  its  emotional  out- 
lets. George  Eliot  never  gave  her  mind,  after  it  was 
once  awakened,  completely  to  any  system  of  belief, 
—  not  even  to  Positivism ;  for  although  she  contributed 
to  the  cause,  she  would  not  bind  herself  to  the  extent 
of  joining  with  the  Positivist  church.  It  is  a  "  note  " 
of  every  high  intelligence  to  be  discerning;  and  to 
say  that   George   Eliot  was   influenced   by  her  en- 


150  George  Eliot 

vironment  to  the  extent  of  extinguishing  her  dis- 
cernment is  to  deny  her  her  undeniable  prerogative,  and 
to  turn  her  into  the  company  of  slaves.  She  thought 
Strauss  often  wrong  in  details,  and  did  not  even  con- 
sider his  theory  perfect,  but  *'  only  one  element  in  a 
perfect  theory ;  "  and  her  spirit  shied  at  his  lack  of 
spirit.  After  all,  the  idea  back  of  the  translation  served 
rather  an  intellectual  than  a  moral  purpose,  difficult 
as  it  is  to  separate  the  two  in  such  a  mind.  It  had  the 
element  of  curiosity  in  it ;  and  coming  after  the  '  In- 
quiry,* and  in  the  Bray-Hennell  surroundings,  it  pro- 
voked an  intellect  already  set  on  new  tracks  to  a 
further  investigation  of  their  direction.  Finally,  in 
connection  with  her  work  on  Spinoza,  it  prepared 
the  way  for  that  other  translation  —  the  only  one 
she  published  under  her  own  name  —  into  which  she 
entered  with  a  more  grateful  spirit,  imbued  as  it  was 
with  beliefs  which  kindled  her  generosity  and  shook 
into  full  flower  the  budding  convictions  of  her  thought. 

VI 

If  with  all  the  independence  belonging  to  a  discern- 
ing intelligence  of  eminent  power,  she  is  nevertheless 
malleable  to  an  unlovely  religion  and  to  an  unsym- 
pathetic German  philosophy,  consider  how  deep  was 
the  response  of  her  soul  to  this  new  influence  ;  con- 
tinuing, indeed,  the  critical  method  she  had  been  fol- 
lowing, but  substituting  a  warm  moral  teaching  for  cold, 
abstract  negations.  Such  was  Feuerbach's  '  Wesen,' 
rank  its  author  though  we  must  among  the  atheists. 
The  translation  of  Spinoza's  '  Tractatus '  helped  to 
develop  her  sceptical  tendencies,  which,  when  she 
came  to  Feuerbach,  were  at  their  highest  pitch  through 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       151 

constant  association  with  the  Westminster  circle.  Not 
that  the  metaphysical  scheme  of  Spinoza,  as  shown  in 
the  '  Ethics,'  which  she  took  up  later,  influenced  her 
deeply,  for  its  absolute  pantheism  is  naturally  opposed 
to  that  desire  to  investigate  the  laws  of  phenomena 
which  is  the  moving  power  of  Positivism ;  and  very 
early  in  Miss  Evans's  development  we  see  this  ten- 
dency towards  the  Positive  belief.  In  the  '  Ethics,' 
however,  she  came  upon  a  system  of  morality  very 
akin  to  the  spirit  of  Positivism,  which  ruled  all  her 
after  labors :  a  system  of  self-assertion  losing  itself  in 
love  of  man  and  God,  the  happiness  which  crowns  its 
fulfilment  resting  in  virtue  rather  than  in  the  rewards 
of  virtue.  "  The  God-intoxicated  Spinoza,"  old  Nov- 
alis  called  him,  but,  enthusiasms  aside,  we  cannot 
escape  seeing  the  logical  outcome  of  pantheism  to  be 
atheism  ;  and  although  in  a  speculative  sense,  panthe- 
ism may  be  regarded  as  a  God-intoxication,  the  cold- 
blooded Hume  was  nearer  the  exact  truth  when  he 
referred  to  Spinoza  as  "  the  famous  atheist." 

His  denial  of  immortality  placed  Feuerbach,  too, 
in  the  same  category;  but  his  peculiar  charm  for 
George  Eliot  lay  in  his  revolt  from  the  mere  jugglery 
of  metaphysics  and  in  his  belief  that  the  search  for 
truth  should  be  grounded  upon  the  investigation  of 
actual  phenomena, —  this  and  the  correspondence  he 
claims  to  exist  between  the  articles  of  Christian  belief 
and  the  necessities  of  human  nature,  each  belief  being 
the  creation  of  some  natural  wish.  The  removal  of 
the  supernatural  from  Christianity  necessitates  a 
natural  explanation  for  Christian  beliefs  and  prac- 
tices; and  to  a  generous  mind  such  an  explanation 
must  be  based  on  a  hope  amounting  to  conviction  of 
the  gradual  upward  tendency  of  human  desire,  through 


152  George  Eliot 

the  efforts  of  those  who  have  at  heart  the  Social 
Good. 

The  morality  of  the  system  of  Feuerbach  is  of  this 
elevated  order,  and  it  found  an  echo  in  his  translator. 
He  aims  always  at  reality.  "  Let  us  concentrate  our- 
selves on  what  is  real,"  he  says,  "  and  great  men  will 
revive,  and  great  actions  will  return."  "  Health  is 
more  than  immortality"  is  his  doctrine,  —  that  is, 
social  health ;  and  that  is  the  chief  note  of  George 
Eliot  also.  The  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  would 
be  explained  by  Feuerbach  as  the  embodiment  of  the 
instinct  in  man  for  the  continuity  and  perpetuity  of 
life ;  and,  ethically,  he  would  teach  the  value  of  the 
instinct  as  a  part  of  that  highest  good  which  man 
creates  out  of  his  longings,  and  towards  which  he 
worships.  But  the  practical  atheism  of  his  teaching 
was  proved  by  its  failure  when  applied  by  the  Ger- 
man communists  to  their  lives ;  its  self-centred  divin- 
ity necessarily  excluding  any  moral  obligation  outside 
of  self.  Unfortunately  for  all  such  systems,  mankind 
is  composed  of  units,  and  the  units  not  being  for  the 
most  part  full  of  an  exalted  social  morality,  —  not 
units  like  Feuerbach  and  George  Eliot,  —  each  unit 
will  eventually  become  a  law  unto  itself,  with  an 
ensuing  anarchy.^ 

The  struggle  of  George  Eliot  was  between  her  de- 
sire to  help  others  by  the  application  of  an  ennobling 
system  of  life,  and  her  purely  intellectual  convictions. 
She  was  in  the  position  of  Kant,  who  strove  to  erect 
with  his  left  hand  what  his  right  hand  had  destroyed  ; 
and  she  followed   Kant's    lead  in  her  difficulty  by 

1  Mallock's  '  Is  Life  Worth  Living  ? '  chaps,  i.-x.  inc.,  is  the  unan- 
swerable argument  to  all  anthropocentric  systems  of  morality. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy      153 

separating  the  sphere  of  cognition  from  that  of  will. 
There  is  no  God  such  as  the  Christians  have  believed 
in,  but  there  is  duty,  there  are  moral  obligations  and 
a  necessity  for  raising  life  from  low  to  high  planes. 
So  Kant,  swallowing  his  formula,  in  Carlyle's  phrase, 
was  bound  to  divorce  duty  from  the  sphere  of  cogni- 
tion, the  conception  of  duty  being  incognizable  in 
his  philosophy.  A  Kritik  of  Practical  Reason  had 
thus  to  follow,  to  make  a  place  for  the  morality 
which  the  Kritik  of  Pure  Reason  had,  metaphysically, 
abolished. 

George  Eliot's  philosophy  was  moral,  not  meta- 
physical, because  metaphysics  is  insensible  to  moral- 
ity. The  Social  Good  takes  the  place  of  God ;  and 
this  was  so  much  of  a  personality  to  her  that  the 
capital  letters  are  justified,  like  Herbert  Spencer's 
Ultimate  Reality  and  Matthew  Arnold's  Something 
not  Ourselves.  The  household  goods  become  the 
household's  God.  She  gives  to  the  attributes  of  God 
the  personality  belonging  to  God,  making  them  God, 
and  calling  God  by  the  names  of  the  attributes,  as  in 
her  beautiful  reference  to  the  Unseen  Pity.  The  re- 
sult would  be  considered  a  kind  of  sublimated  poly- 
theism, if  a  rhetorical  allowance  were  not  made  for 
an  emotional  —  of  course,  I  am  using  the  word  in  its 
best  and  highest  sense  — writer  warmed  through  and 
through  with  altruistic  fire. 

There  is  with  her  an  outer  conscience,  the  moral 
test  being  based  on  an  intellectual  comprehension  of 
what  is  best  and  worst  for  society  in  each  given  case. 
In  depicting  Tito's  first  determining  act  in  persuad- 
ing himself,  against  himself,  of  his  father's  death,  she 
says: 


154  George  Eliot 

But  the  inward  shame,  the  reflex  of  that  outward  law 
which  the  great  heart  of  mankind  makes  for  every  indi- 
vidual man,  a  reflex  which  will  exist  even  in  the  absence 
of  the  sympathetic  impulses  that  need  no  law,  but  rush  to 
the  deed  of  fidelity  and  pity  as  inevitably  as  the  brute 
mother  shields  her  young  from  the  attack  of  the  hereditary 
enemy,  —  that  inward  shame  was  showing  its  blushes  in 
Tito's  determined  assertion  to  himself  that  his  father  was 
dead,  or  that  at  least  search  was  hopeless. 

Further  on,  as  the  dilemma  begins  to  press  him 
more  urgently: 

Having  once  begun  to  explain  away  Baldassare's  claim, 
Tito's  thought  showed  itself  as  active  as  a  virulent  acid, 
eating  its  rapid  way  through  all  the  tissues  of  sentiment. 
His  mind  was  destitute  of  that  dread  which  has  been  erro- 
neously decried  as  if  it  were  nothing  higher  than  a  man's 
animal  care  for  his  own  skin  :  that  awe  of  the  Divine  Nem- 
esis which  was  felt  by  religious  pagans,  and,  though  it 
took  a  more  positive  form  under  Christianity,  is  still  felt  by 
the  mass  of  mankind  simply  as  a  vague  fear  at  anything 
which  is  called  wrong-doing.  Such  terror  of  the  unseen  is 
so  far  above  mere  sensual  cowardice  that  it  will  annihilate 
that  cowardice :  it  is  the  initial  recognition  of  a  moral  law 
restraining  desire,  and  checks  the  hard,  bold  scrutiny  of 
imperfect  thought  into  obligations  which  can  never  be 
proved  to  have  any  sanctity  in  the  absence  of  feeling.  "  It 
is  good,"  sing  the  old  Eumenides,  in  ^schylus,  "  that  fear 
should  sit  as  the  guardian  of  the  soul,  forcing  it  into  wis- 
dom, —  good  that  men  should  carry  a  threatening  shadow 
in  their  hearts  under  the  full  sunshine ;  else  how  shall  they 
learn  to  revere  the  right?  "  That  guardianship  may  become 
needless ;  but  only  when  all  outward  law  has  become  need- 
less, —  only  when  duty  and  love  have  united  in  one  stream 
and  made  a  common  force. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       155 

But  here  the  difficulty  of  the  Feuerbach  revolution- 
ists meets  us  again,  for  how  is  this  "  outward  "  moral- 
ity, which  "  the  great  heart  of  mankind  "  makes  for 
every  man,  to  be  applied  where  perceptions  are  not 
fine,  as  with  most,  and  where  the  intellect  is  limited, 
as  with  all?  Christianity  has  its  outward  conscience, 
too,  in  its  Sinai  and  its  Sermon  on  the  Mount;  and 
its  inner  conscience  is  the  divine  reflex,  to  borrow 
George  Eliot's  own  phrase,  of  this  outer.  It  is  di- 
vine because  it  is  a  reflection  of  the  divine,  whereas 
an  anthropocentric  system  (which,  be  it  remembered, 
is  the  only  system  remaining  after  the  removal  of  the 
divine)  makes  the  divine  human,  because  it  is  a  re- 
flection of  the  human. 

VII 

It  is  peculiarly  appropriate,  in  a  review  of  George 
Eliot's  philosophy,  to  quote  the  definition  of  that 
doctrine  which,  more  than  any  other,  filled  her  life, 
given  by  the  man  who,  more  than  any  other,  moulded 
it.  "  This  is  the  mission  of  Positivism,"  says  Mr. 
Lewes,^  "  to  generalize  science,  and  to  systematize 
sociality;  in  other  words,  it  aims  at  creating  a  phi- 
losophy of  the  sciences  as  a  basis  for  a  new  social 
faith.  A  social  doctrine  is  the  aim  of  Positivism,  a 
scientific  doctrine  the  means,  just  as  a  man's  intelli- 
gence is  the  minister  and  interpreter  of  life."  Ac- 
cording to  Comte,  the  theological  or  supernatural 
phase  of  intellectual  evolution  is  that  in  which  the 
mind  seeks  ^««j^5  for  phenomena;  the  metaphysical 
that  in  which  abstract  forces  are  found  inherent  in 

1  Comte's  '  Philosophy  of  the  Sciences.'  By  G.  H.  Lewes.  Bohn, 
London,  1853,  section  i,  p.  9. 


156  George  Eliot 

substances;  and  the  positive  phase  that  in  which 
causes  are  not  looked  for  either  above  or  in  matter, 
but  laws.  Conditions,  not  theories,  form  the  funda- 
mental groundwork  of  the  Positive  scheme. 

The  fourth  and  last  volume  of  Comte's  '  Polity  '  was 
published  in  1854,  the  first  year  of  George  Eliot's 
union  with  Lewes,  and  Lewes  was  an  ardent  admirer 
of  the  Frenchman's  philosophy.  In  the  classification 
of  the  sciences  which  Comte  eff'ected.  Sociology  is 
placed  in  the  list  after  Biology,  on  the  ground  that 
the  facts  of  human  society  may  not  be  successfully 
studied  without  reference  to  the  facts  of  animal  life. 
Mr.  Lewes'  interest  in  Comte  was  undoubtedly  due, 
primarily,  to  this  scientific  method,  the  "  scientific 
doctrine  "  appealing  to  him  as  an  enthusiastic  student 
of  biology,  and  awakening  in  him  a  curiosity  to  dis- 
cover the  intermediary  relations  between  the  various 
forms  of  life ;  and  although  he  never  accepted  the 
full  doctrine  of  Comte,  and  published  his  divergences 
with  sufficient  emphasis  to  sever  the  friendship  exist- 
ing between  them,^  Comte's  attempt  at  co-ordination 
was  nevertheless  enough  to  rank  Lewes  among  the 
Positivists. 

The  social  doctrine  as  the  aim  of  the  system,  of 
which  the  scientific  doctrine  was  the  preparation, 
dominated  George  Eliot's  thought  because  it  arranged 
the  life  of  man  —  his  mind,  his  force,  his  hopes  and 
aspirations  —  in  an  order  which  gave  the  fullest  scope 
to  its  beneficent  play,  Comte  had  no  faith  in  political 
salvations,  in  righteousness  made  easy  by  parliaments, 
but  recognized  the  profound  truth  that  social  excel- 


1  Leslie   Stephen:  article   'Lewes'    in   'Dictionary  of  National 
Biography.' 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       157 

lence  must  be  the  result  of  moral  effort.  Selfishness 
blocks  this  effort,  and  the  social  feeling  blocks  selfish- 
ness, egoism  giving  place  to  altruism.  Intellect  had 
been  enslaved  by  the  Church,  and  had  naturally  re- 
volted. The  feelings  had  been  unduly  exalted,  and 
were  in  consequence  unduly  debased.  Now  was  the 
intellect  to  serve  the  feelings,  not  in  the  old  slavish 
way,  but  with  a  new  glad  liberty.  This  is  religion, 
which  in  view  of  the  illimitable  network  of  life,  must 
include  all  of  that  life  in  its  scope.  The  great  uni- 
versal order  which  the  inter- relationship  of  the  sciences 
revealed  was  always  before  George  Eliot;  but  the 
chief  scientific  value  of  Positivism  was  for  her,  as  it 
was  for  Comte  himself,  in  its  application  to  human 
conduct. 

An  explanation  of  her  charity  —  what  I  have  called 
her  compassion  —  is  discoverable  in  her  adoption  of 
the  Positive  classification,  for  it  taught  her  that  a  man, 
as  a  member  of  human  society,  could  not  be  under- 
stood unless  the  facts  of  that  portion  of  the  society 
which  constituted  his  environment  were  properly 
comprehended ;  which,  in  turn,  were  to  be  understood 
only  by  a  comprehension  of  the  biological  conditions 
upon  which  the  facts  of  human  society  rest.  Before 
utterly  condemning  a  man's  lamentable  shortcomings, 
therefore,  we  should  consider  several  things,  —  envi- 
ronment, habit,  heredity,  —  and  should  temper  our 
judgments  accordingly.  But  this  simply  afforded  a 
scientific  excuse  for  the  religious  end  and  aim  of  the 
philosophy,  —  altruism.  The  ruling  power  within  the 
great  universal  order,  bringing  it  "  continually  to  per- 
fection by  constantly  conforming  to  its  laws"  —  its 
soul  and  its  spirit — is  Humanity,  which  Comte  ele- 
vates to  the  throne  of  divinity,  calling  it  "  Our  Provi- 


158  George  Eliot 

dence,"  and  " The  Great  Being."  "This  undeniable 
Providence,  the  supreme  dispenser  of  our  destinies, 
becomes  in  the  natural  course  the  common  centre  of 
our  affections,  our  thoughts,  and  our  actions.  Al- 
though this  Great  Being  evidently  exceeds  the  utmost 
strength  of  any,  even  of  any  collective  human  force, 
its  necessary  constitution  and  its  peculiar  function 
endow  it  with  the  truest  sympathy  towards  all  its 
servants.  The  least  amongst  us  ought  constantly  to 
aspire  to  maintain  and  even  to  improve  this  Being. 
This  natural  object  of  all  our  activity,  both  public  and 
private,  determines  the  true  general  character  of  the 
rest  of  our  existence,  whether  in  feeling  or  in  thought ; 
which  must  be  devoted  to  love,  and  to  know,  in  order 
rightly  to  serve,  our  Providence,  by  a  wise  use  of  all 
the  means  which  it  furnishes  to  us.  Reciprocally,  the 
continued  service,  whilst  strengthening  our  true  unity, 
renders  us  at  once  both  happier  and  better."  ^ 

In  other  words,  Comte  said :  Religion  belongs  to 
life.  Life  is,  in  its  fullest  development.  Humanity. 
The  God  of  religion  is  therefore  Humanity.  And 
while  some  of  his  scientific  followers,  like  Littre,  base 
their  support  exclusively  on  the  first  half  of  his  work, 
going  so  far  as  to  think  that  the  extravagances  of  the 
reactionary  last  half  are  due  to  mental  unbalance,  the 
effort  in  the  "  Polity  "  at  superstructure  on  a  hitherto 
laid  foundation  is  nevertheless  apparent.  It  is,  indeed, 
reactionary  in  so  far  as  it  has  to  account  for  the  Ab- 
solute, which  is  excluded  in  the  "Philosophy"  as  not 
properly  subject  to  law,  and  as  therefore  not  a  subject 
for  scientific,  /.  e.,  positive,  thought.     But  the  wants 


^  '  System  of  Positive  Polity '  by  Auguste  Comte.  Longmans,  Green 
&  Co.,  London,  1875,  vol.  ii.,  p.  53. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       159 

of  man's  nature  must  betaken  into  account;  and  so, 
under  the  same  necessity  which  forced  Kant  to  write 
his  second  Kritik,  we  have  Comte's  "  social  doctrine." 
It  is  the  old  story.  Neither  Kant  nor  Comte  can 
eliminate  God. 

George  Eliot,  like  Mr.  Lewes,  never  went  the  full 
length  of  Comtism.  Her  sense  of  humor,  no  doubt, 
prevented  her  from  joining  the  Positivist  church,  and 
she  must  have  looked  with  pity  upon  the  amazing 
sacerdotalism  which  it  borrowed  from  the  Catholics. 
She  acknowledges  it  to  be  one-sided.^  But  it  influ- 
enced her  more  than  any  other  influence  of  her  life. 
Writing  from  Biarritz  in  1867,  she  says,  "...  after 
breakfast  we  both  read  the  *  Politique '  —  George  one 
volume  and  I  another,  interrupting  each  other  con- 
tinually with  questions  and  remarks.  That  morning 
study  keeps  me  in  a  state  of  enthusiasm  through  the 
day — a  moral  glow  which  is  a  sort  oi  7nilieu  subjectif 
for  the  sublime  sea  and  sky;  "  and  Mr.  Cross  says  : 
"  For  all  Comte's  writing  she  had  a  feeling  of  high 
admiration,  intense  interest,  and  very  deep  sympathy. 
I  do  not  think  I  ever  heard  her  speak  of  any  writer 
with  a  more  grateful  sense  of  obligation  for  enlighten- 
ment." ^  Her  selective  discernment  rejected  the  ritual, 
the  sacerdotal  claims,  the  extraordinary  pretensions 
to  dictatorship  of  a  thinker  whose  exalted  motive  she 
reverenced;  and  while  she  never  consciously  wor- 
shipped humanity,  the  animating  idea  of  Comte's 
system  she  recognized  as  the  best  idea  for  men.  Her 
books  quiver  with  it,  and  all  her  contrasts  are  drawn 
with  the  intention  of  showing  the  two  contending 
forces  in  interplay :  egoism  and  altruism ;  the  self- 
concentration  which  in  ministering  to  personal  grati- 

1  '  Life,'  vol.  ii.,  p.  139.  2  7^^  vol.  iii.,  p.  419. 


i6o  George  Eliot 

fications,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  social  good,  hinders 
that  good  according  to  the  varying  degrees  of  its 
pernicious  activity ;  and,  opposed  to  this,  the  cen- 
tring of  the  Hfe  on  a  sympathetic  attempt  towards 
perfecting  and  ever  more  perfecting  the  social  good 
by  relegating  self  to  its  proper  place  among  the  other 
units.  Thus  Casaubon  plays  against  Dorothea, 
Rosamond  against  Lydgate,  Tito  against  Romola, 
Romola  against  Savonarola,  Sylva  against  Zarca, 
Esther  and  Harold  against  Felix  and  Mr.  Lyon.  The 
cold,  deadening,  snaky  qualities  of  Grandcourt's  ego- 
ism become  repellent  to  Gwendolen  only  as  the 
opposing  warm,  vivifying,  sympathetic  altruism  of 
Deronda  begins  to  stream  upon  her. 

It  was  an  heroic  belief,  for  she  was  fighting  under 
a  standard  which  had  no  standard-bearer ;  and  it  is 
as  fine  a  spectacle  as  that  of  the  Spartans  fighting  in 
the  shade.  There  was  no  exemplar,  no  Captain  of 
salvation.  The  Luther  she  admires  could  not  have 
fought  thus,  and  the  finest  tribute  to  her  Savonarola 
must  always  be  that  it  is  true  to  the  Christian  ideal 
of  Christ,  without  which  the  historical  Savonarola 
could  not  have  defied  the  powers  of  darkness. 

VIII 

It  is  not  quite  fair  to  say  that  the  sadness  of  George 
Eliot's  work  comes  from  a  lack  of  belief  in  a  divine 
Person,  or  from  a  disbelief  in  Christian  immortality, 
because  there  are  a  good  many  "  orthodox  "  novelists 
who  are  sad,  and  not  a  few  agnostics  who  are  merry. 
George  Eliot  did  not  make  life  sad;  ^^  found  \\.  so, 
just  as  the  painter  finds  the  sunset  tender,  and  so 
represents  it  on  his  canvas.    Furthermore,  the  genius 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       i6i 

of  the  author  is  engaged  in  the  demonstration  of  why- 
it  is  sad,  and  in  suggesting  the  removal,  or  at  least 
the  bettering  of  its  conditions  by  the  substitution  of 
sympathy  for  selfishness. 

Egoism  is  sin,  she  says  again  and  again ;  and  she 
believes  that  its  wages  is  death  —  the  death  of  noble 
effort  and  strenuous  moral  activity,  of  high  purpose 
and  generous  endeavor,  of  "  the  thoughts  that  urge 
man's  search  to  vaster  issues,"  of  goodness  in  a  world 
meant  to  be  good  —  for  so  she  believed  —  and  of 
that  love  which  is  its  essence.  So  far  as  moral  pur- 
pose is  concerned,  what  more  does  the  Christian 
believe?  Christianity,  indeed,  holds  positively  what 
Positivism  holds  positively,  but  it  also  holds  positively 
what  Positivism  implicitly  denies, 

George  Eliot  said  she  would  consent  to  have  a  year 
dipt  off  her  life  "  for  the  sake  of  witnessing  such  a 
scene  as  that  of  the  men  of  the  barricades  [in  Paris] 
bowing  to  the  image  of  Christ,  who  first  taught 
fraternity  to  men."^  In  her  early  days  at  least  Chris- 
tian teaching  did  not  dwell  as  tenaciously  as  it  does 
now  on  the  brotherhood  of  man.  The  Evangelical- 
ism of  her  childhood  certainly  did  not  inculcate  a 
knowledge  of  belief  in,  and  love  for,  the  fatherhood 
of  God  because  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  through 
the  connecting  link  of  Christ  the  Elder  Brother.  The 
Suffering  Christ  was,  on  the  one  hand,  too  much  of  a 
theological  idea,  and,  on  the  other,  too  much  of  a 
mechanical  picture,  to  hinder  the  growing  thought  of 
the  young  century  from  forming  new  ideas  of  frater- 
nity entirely  freed   from   the   theological  standards 


1  '  Life,'  vol.  i.,  p.  179.      In  a  letter  concerning  the  second  French 
revolution. 


1 62  George  Eliot 

which  had  in  large  part  ceased  to  convince.  To-day 
there  is  a  convergence  of  Christian  and  agnostic 
altruism,  and  their  ethical  standards  are  practically 
identical.  It  is  because  the  fulness  of  Christianity, 
which  in  the  inertness  of  those  evil  days  —  evil  be- 
cause inert  —  lay  shrivelled  in  dry  formulas,  has 
now  opened  upon  the  Church  with  its  beautiful 
humanities,  with  its  practical  enforcements  to  "  do 
good  and  distribute,"  and  with  its  benevolences, 
guilds,  and  brotherhoods  as  the  direct  outcome  of 
its  spirit. 

Christianity,  as  Mr.  Mallock  has  pointed  out,  has 
so  permeated  the  thought  of  man  that  it  has  become 
"  mixed  "  with  that  thought ;  and  thinkers  like  George 
Eliot  are,  in  spite  of  theoretical  beliefs  and  disbeliefs, 
bound  to  breathe  a  moral  air  saturated  with  Christian 
principles.  When  Dorothea,  after  her  night  of  agony, 
goes  to  Rosamond,  she  sinks  the  selfish  promptings 
of  a  justifiable  indignation  in  a  large  charity  which 
lovingly  discerns  the  evil  inherent  in  the  indignation 
if  nourished  to  the  exclusion  of  the  "  precious  seeing  " 
of  the  possibilities  of  allaying  the  troubles  even  of  the 
personal  cause  of  the  indignation ;  and  by  so  doing 
becomes  the  "  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused  "which 
will  bear  its  share  in  the  general  progress  towards 
light  and  right.  We  instinctively  say  she  does  a 
Christian  act.  She  suffers  long,  and  nevertheless  is 
kind.  She  does  unto  others  as  she  would,  in  her  best 
moments,  have  others  do  unto  her.  Dorothea,  we 
are  told,  had  ceased  to  pray,  apparently  on  the 
ground  that  prayer  is  egotistical  (as  if  good  Chris- 
tians limited  their  petitions  to  personal  requests,  like 
Bulstrode.  The  noblest  prayer,  the  pre-eminently 
Christian  prayer,  Christ's  own  prayer,  is  the  opposite 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       163 

of  this^)  ;  but  if  conduct  is  three-fourths  of  life,  then 
that  proportion  of  her  life  is  Christian.  It  is  the 
other  quarter  which  she  misses,  and  which  her  creator 
missed. 


IX 

Had  George  Eliot's  star  arisen  a  little  later,  it 
would,  I  think,  have  shone  in  a  clearer  sky.  We  have 
seen  how  impressionable,  how  malleable  she  was. 
The  doctrine  of  evolution  was  in  its  earliest  develop- 
ment in  her  day, — the  scientists  of  her  acquaintance 
holding  that  life  was  the  creature  of  organism,  and 
therefore  material  and  not  immortal.  She  might,  if 
living  now,  be  entertaining  the  hope  of  the  evolu- 
tionists who  followed  Darwin,  that  life  is  not  the  crea- 
ture, but  the  maker  of  organism,  —  a  hope  entirely 
consistent  with  the  hope  of  Christianity.  We  must 
consider  George  Eliot  the  greatest  of  all  moralists 
in  literature,  because,  in  view  of  the  terrible  conse- 
quences of  a  materialistic  conviction  of  life  upon  a 
naturally  idealistic  temperament,  her  emotions  are 
stirred  all  the  more  generously  by  the  aspect  of  the 
pain  involved  in  the  constant  struggle  for  existence. 
With  no  faith  in  another,  future,  life  to  explain  the 
purpose  of  that  struggle,  she  nevertheless  found  a 
moral  philosophy  in  the  contemplation   of  a  life  of 

1  She  herself  says,  in  'Daniel  Deronda':  "  The  most  powerful 
movement  of  feeling  with  a  liturgy  is  the  prayer  which  seeks  for  noth- 
ing special,  but  is  a  yearning  to  escape  from  the  limitations  of  our 
own  weakness,  and  an  invocation  of  all  Good  to  enter  and  abide  with 
us ;  or  else  a  self -oblivious  lifting  up  of  gladness,  a  Gloria  in  Excelsis 
that  such  good  exists;  both  the  yearning  and  the  exaltation  gathering 
their  utmost  force  from  the  sense  of  communion  in  a  form  which  has 
expressed  them  both  for  long  generations  of  struggling  fellow-men." 


164  George  Eliot 

social  helpfulness  which  was,  to  all  practical  intents 
and  purposes,  Christian.  ^ 

She  sees  duty  in  the  light  of  moral  emotion,  rather 
than  in  that  of  religious  enthusiasm.  But  the  impor- 
tant point  is  that  it  is  duty  that  she  sees.  She  was 
neither  a  Far  Seer  like  Emerson,  nor  a  prophet  like 
Ruskin,  nor  a  cold  Wisdom  like  Goethe.  She  ad- 
mired Emerson  so  much  on  meeting  him  in  1848  as 
to  say,  "  I  have  seen  Emerson, —  the  first  man  I  have 
ever  seen."^  But  her  genius  had  really  but  little  in 
common  with  a  transcendentalism  which,  like  a  fly- 
ing machine  beyond  the  control  of  its  maker,  is  likely 
to  land  one  in  a  morass  beyond  the  highways  of  hu- 
man experience.  And  her  feeling  for  others,  her 
reverence  for  the  reverence  of  others,  as  a  part  of  the 
force  spiritualizing  the  solidarity  of  mankind,  would 
have  restrained  her  from  the  occasional  extravagances 
of  Emerson,  such  as  his "  Jesus  would  absorb  the 
race ;  but  Tom  Paine  or  the  coarsest  blasphemer 
helps  humanity  by  resisting  this  exuberance  of 
power."  As  for  prophecy,  it  is  nearer  to  the  human 
heart  to  tell  of  actual  experiences  in  the  light  of  pres- 
ent known  conditions  than  to  foretell  future  conditions 
involving  experiences  not  yet  actual.  And  the  danger 
underlying  the  Ruskin  attitude  is  sufficiently  indi- 
cated in  the  cruelly  mistaken  criticism  of  George  Eliot's 
own  work  which  the  author  of  'Modern  Painters' 
persuaded  an  editor  (doubtless  by  the  magic  of  his 
name,  for  from  scarcely  another  would  it  have  been 
accepted)   to  publish.^     Finally,   as   compared   with 

1  It  is  significant  that  the  last  word  she  ever  wrote  was  the  word 
"  affection,"  in  her  unfinished  letter  to  Mrs.  Strachey.  '  Life,'  vol.  iii., 
p.  438. 

*  '  Life,'  vol.  i.,  p.  191. 

«  '  Fiction  Fair  and  Foul,'  Nineteenth  Century,  October,  1881. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       165 

Goethe,  she  may  be  said  to  have  the  wisdom  which 
comes  from  experience.  "  Experientia  docet,"  even 
though  we  must  add,  "tristiter."  Goethe  is  her  supe- 
rior in  a  certain  calm,  sphynx-h'ke  wisdom,  but,  as  he 
has  himself  said,  he  knew  Man  better  than  men ;  and 
he  lacked  the  sympathy  which  must  destroy  this 
Olympian  sagaciousness.  If  the  humanity  of  George 
Eliot's  wisdom  sometimes  prevented  its  freest  exer- 
cise, it  errs  in  high  company.  The  wisest  man  who 
ever  lived  once  said  a  foolish  thing,  for  he  said, 
"  Everything  is  vanity ;  "  whereas  we  who  are  not  so 
wise  know  better.  Wisdom,  with  a  sympathetic 
thinker,  is  always  seen  through  the  lumen  humidiiin 
of  feeling.  Goethe,  on  the  contrary,  saw  life  through 
dry  spectacles. 

X 

"  The  idea  of  God,"  says  George  Eliot,  in  her  essay 
against  Evangelical  teaching  of  the  Gumming  type, 
"  is  really  moral  in  its  influence, — it  really  cherishes  all 
that  is  best  and  loveliest  in  man,  only  when  God  is  con- 
templated as  sympathizing  with  the  pure  elements  of 
human  feeling,  as  possessing  infinitely  all  those  attri- 
butes which  we  recognize  to  be  moral  in  humanity ; " 
and  her  quarrel  with  Dr.  Gumming  was  precisely  that 
his  God  was  the  opposite  of  this.  "  He  is  a  God  who, 
instead  of  adding  his  solar  force  to  swell  the  tide 
of  those  impulses  that  tend  to  give  humanity  a  com- 
mon life  in  which  the  good  of  one  is  the  good  of  all, 
commands  us  to  check  those  impulses  lest  they 
should  prevent  us  from  thinking  of  his  glory." 

The  God  she  here  sketches  as  a  possible  ideal  is, 
in  reality,  the  God  of  the  Christian  ideal  of  these  last 


1 66  George  Eliot 

times ;  while  Dr.  Cumming's  divinity,  so  mercilessly 
exposed  by  her,  is  no  longer  a  living  God,  because 
he  cannot  now  be  reconciled  with  noble  feeling.  ^ 
And  though  we  must  regard  as  illusions,  George 
Eliot  seems  to  say,  much  which  has  been  accepted  as 
fact,  the  illusions  are  only  reprehensible  when  they 
do  not  fit  into  this  sympathetic  idea  of  God.  After 
Harold  Transome  had  left  Mr.  Lyon,  on  his  election- 
eering tour,  the  author  imagines  a  cynical  sprite  rid- 
ing on  one  of  the  motes  in  the  dusty  study  of  the 
little  minister,  and  making  merry  at  his  illusions  in 
regard  to  the  Radical  candidate.  She  cannot  help 
smiling  herself,  but  she  immediately  falls  to  peni- 
tence and  veneration. 

^  It  is  only  certain  kinds  of  preaching  she  objects  to.  "Yesterday, 
for  the  first  time,  we  went  to  hear  A.  (a  popular  preacher).  I  remem- 
ber what  you  said  about  his  vulgar,  false  emphasis ;  but  there  re- 
mained the  fact  of  his  celebrity.  I  was  glad  of  the  opportunity. 
But  my  impression  fell  below  the  lowest  judgment  I  ever  heard  passed 
upon  him.  He  has  a  gift  of  a  fine  voice,  very  flexible  and  various  ;  he 
is  admirably  fluent  and  clear  in  his  language,  and  every  now  and  then 
his  enunciation  is  effective.  But  I  never  heard  any  pulpit  reading 
and  speaking  which,  in  its  level  tone,  was  more  utterly  common  and 
empty  of  guiding  intelligence  or  emotion ;  it  was  as  if  the  words  had 
been  learned  by  heart  and  uttered  without  comprehension  by  a  man 
who  had  no  instinct  of  rhythm  or  music  in  his  soul.  And  the  doctrine  I 
It  was  a  libel  on  Calvinism  that  it  should  be  presented  in  such  a 
form.  I  never  heard  any  attempt  to  exhibit  the  soul's  experience 
that  was  more  destitute  of  insight.  The  sermon  was  against  Fear,  in 
the  elect  Christian,  as  being  a  distrust  of  God ;  but  never  once  did  he 
touch  the  true  ground  of  fear  —  the  doubt  whether  the  signs  of  God's 
choice  are  present  in  the  soul.  We  had  plenty  of  anecdotes,  but  they 
were  all  poor  and  pointless,  —  Tract  Society  anecdotes  of  the  feeblest 
kind.  It  was  the  most  superficial  grocer's-back-parlor  view  of  Cal- 
vinistic  Christianity ;  and  I  was  shocked  to  find  how  low  the  mental 
pitch  of  our  society  must  be,  judged  by  the  standard  of  this  man's 
celebrity.  .  .  . 

"Just  now,  with  all  Europe  stirred  by  events  that  make  every 
conscience    tremble    after  some    great    principle    as  a  consolation 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       167 

For  what  we  call  illusions  are  often,  in  truth,  a  wider 
vision  of  past  and  present  realities  —  a  willing  movement  of 
a  man's  soul  with  the  larger  sweep  of  the  world's  forces  — 
a  movement  towards  a  more  assured  end  than  the  chances 
of  a  single  life.  We  see  human  heroism  broken  into  units 
and  say,  This  unit  did  little  —  might  as  well  not  have  been. 
But  in  this  way  we  might  break  a  great  army  into  units ;  in 
this  way  we  might  break  sunlight  into  fragments,  and  think 
that  this  and  the  other  might  be  cheaply  parted  with.  Let 
us  rather  raise  a  monument  to  the  soldiers  whose  brave 
hearts  only  kept  the  ranks  unbroken,  and  met  death  —  a 
monument  to  the  faithful  who  were  not  famous,  and  who  are 
precious  as  the  continuity  of  the  sunbeams  is  precious,  though 
some  of  them  fall  unseen  and  on  barrenness. 

At  present,  looking  back  on  that  day  at  Treby,  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  sadder  illusion  lay  with  Harold  Transome,  who 
was  trusting  in  his  own  skill  to  shape  the  success  of  his 
own  morrows,  ignorant  of  what  many  yesterdays  had  deter- 
mined for  him  beforehand. 

This  inclusive  brotherhood  was  always  in  her  vision, 
and  the  large  view  of  it  here  shown  is  but  an  extension 

and  guide,  it  was  too  exasperating  to  sit  and  listen  to  doctrine  that 
seemed  to  look  no  further  than  the  retail  Christian's  tea  and  muffins. 
He  said,  '  Let  us  approach  the  throne  of  God,'  very  much  as  he  might 
have  invited  you  to  take  a  chair ;  and  then  followed  this  fine  touch : 
'  We  feel  no  love  to  God  because  he  hears  the  prayers  of  others ; 
it  is  because  he  hears  my  prayer  that  I  love  him.'  " — '  Life,'  vol.  iii., 
pp.  121  uq. 

In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Ponsonby,  from  Hertfordshire,  she  says  :  "  I 
prefer  a  country  where  I  don't  make  bad  blood  by  having  to  see  one 
public  house  to  every  six  dwellings — which  is  literally  the  case  in 
many  spots  around  us.  My  gall  rises  at  the  rich  brewers  in  parlia- 
ment and  out  of  it,  who  plant  these  poison  shops  for  the  sake  of 
their  million-making  trade,  while  probably  their  families  are  figuring 
somewhere  as  refined  philanthropists  or  devout  evangelicals  and 
ritualists." — '  Life,'  vol.  iii.,  p.  245.     See  also  vol.  iii.,  pp.  253-255. 

The  nobler  preaching,  like  the  nobler  living,  she  had  no  quarrel 
with. 


1 68  George  Eliot 

of  that  simple  elementary  feeling  which  stirs  the  pulses 
of  a  child,  as  surely  as  it  awakens  the  desires  of  a 
man.  As  Tom  and  Maggie  were  setting  out  for  their 
home  on  that  desolate  November  morning,  their  youth 
already  joined  with  sorrow,  — 

Mrs.  Stalling  came  with  a  little  basket,  which  she  hung 
on  Maggie's  arms,  saying,  "  Do  remember  to  eat  something 
on  the  way,  dear."  Maggie's  heart  went  out  towards  this 
woman  whom  she  had  never  liked,  and  she  kissed  her 
silently.  It  was  the  first  sign  within  the  poor  child  of  that 
new  sense  which  is  the  gift  of  sorrow  —  that  susceptibility  to 
the  bare  offices  of  humanity  which  raises  them  into  a  bond 
of  loving  fellowship,  as  to  haggard  men  among  the  icebergs 
the  mere  presence  of  an  ordinary  comrade  stirs  the  deep 
fountains  of  affection.^ 


XI 

This,  then,  was  the  religion  of  George  Eliot.  She 
would  doubtless  have  preferred  Positivism  to  have 
remained  a  controlling  philosophy  without  its  ecclesi- 
astical development;  just  as  Martineau  wished  to 
restrain  Unitarian  thinkers  from  uniting  in  a  Uni- 
tarian denomination.  But  the  universal  tendency 
of  abstract  religious  thought  is  inevitably  towards  out- 
ward ritual  organization ;  and  an  attempt  to  free  re- 
ligious thought  from  the  narrowness  of  sect  resulted 
in  the  addition  of  a  new  sect  with  thoughts  unfreed. 
Ideas,  with  George  Eliot,  were  "  strong  agents  "  be- 

1  To  those  who  are  curious  to  learn  how  such  new  teaching  as  George 
Eliot's  and  George  Macdonald's  affect  a  pronounced  "  Evangelical " 
mind,  it  might  be  interesting  to  consult  '  The  Religion  of  our  Litera- 
ture,' by  George  McCrie.    Hodder  and  Stoughton,  London,  1875. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       169 

cause  taken  in  a  "  solvent  of  feeling."  "  The  great 
world-struggle  of  developing  thought  is  continually- 
foreshadowed  in  the  struggle  of  the  affections,  seeking 
justification  for  hope  and  love."  Like  her  Romola, 
she  distrusted  "phantoms  and  disjointed  whispers  in 
a  world  where  there  was  the  large  music  of  reasonable 
speech  and  the  warm  grasp  of  living  hands."  Yet  in 
the  classical  chapter  in  which  Romola  faces  her  lot 
and  decides  to  leave  Tito,  the  memory  of  the  interview 
with  her  dying  brother  is  thrust  upon  her,  and  she 
longs  to  understand  the  experience  which  guided  his 
life,  and  which  gave  "  a  new  sisterhood  "  [mark  the 
word  of  fellowship]  to  the  wasted  face.  This  memory 
blends  with  that  of  Savonarola  offering  himself  in  the 
Duomo  as  a  sacrifice  for  the  people,  and  makes  her 
thirst  for  these  waters  "  at  which  men  drank  and  found 
strength  in  the  desert."  She  saw  no  visions  herself, 
as  "  she  sat  weary  in  the  darkness."  "  Revealed  re- 
ligion "  was  not  revealed  to  her. 

No  radiant  angel  came  across  the  gloom  with  a  clear 
message  for  her.  In  those  times,  as  now,  there  were  human 
beings  who  never  saw  angels  or  heard  perfectly  clear  mes- 
sages. Such  truth  as  came  to  them  was  brought  confusedly 
in  the  voices  and  deeds  of  men  not  at  all  like  the  seraphs  of 
unfailing  wing  and  piercing  vision  —  men  who  believed  fal- 
sities as  well  as  truths,  and  did  the  wrong  as  well  as  the 
right.  The  helping  hands  stretched  out  to  them  were  the 
hands  of  men  who  stumbled  and  often  saw  dimly,  so  that 
these  beings  unvisited  by  angels  had  no  other  choice  than 
to  grasp  that  stumbling  guidance  along  the  path  of  reliance 
and  action,  which  is  the  path  of  life,  or  else  to  pause  in 
loneliness  and  disbelief,  which  is  no  path,  but  the  arrest  of 
inaction  and  death. 


I/O  George  Eliot 

Inaction  to  George  Eliot  meant  death,  because  it 
meant  a  selfish  loneliness;  and  although  the  guid- 
ance was  stumbling,  it  was  along  the  path  of  life. 
The  radiant  visions  of  a  transcendental  faith  were  not 
hers,  but  hers  was  the  "precious  seeing"  —  "that 
bathing  of  all  objects  in  a  solemnity  as  of  a  sunset 
glow,  which  is  begotten  of  a  loving,  reverent  emotion," 
Although  the  choir  invisible  to  her  meant  a  very  dif- 
ferent thing  from  what  was  understood  by  the  writer 
of  "  .  .  .  the  King  eternal,  immortal,  invisible,"  it  is  a 
fine  choir  and  it  sings  true.  Non  otnnis  moriar,  she 
cries,  even  though  I  go  down  to  dusty  death,  and 
worms  eat  me.  "The  memory  of  the  just  shall  live," 
is  the  key-note  of  her  '  Jubal.'  What  if  the  new  race 
knew  him  not  on  his  return?  They  were  singing  his 
music:  what  was  he  to  that?  She  says  at  the  con- 
clusion of  her  *  Death  of  Moses ' : 

He  has  no  tomb. 

He  dwells  not  with  you  dead,  but  lives  as  law. 

When  Armgart's  voice  fails  her,  and  her  whole  world 
—  the  world  of  art  —  is  destroyed,  she  contemplates 
suicide.  Walpurga,  standing  for  the  vast  army  of 
human  beings  outside  that  world,  tells  her  that  al- 
though her  career  in  song  is  ended,  she  is  not  therefore 
sunk  to  such  moral  penury  as  that. 

Noble  rebellion  lifts  a  common  load, 
But  what  is  he  who  flings  his  own  load  off 
And  leaves  his  fellows  toiling  ?     Rebel's  right  ? 
Say  rather,  the  deserter's. 

Then  Armgart,  slowly  awakening  to  the  realization 
that  there  may  be  pain  around  her  beside  her  own, 
complains  that  if  there  were  one  near  her  now  suffer- 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       171 

ing  like  herself  and  needing  her  for  comfort,  it  would 
be  worth  while  for  her  to  live. 

WALPURGA 

One,  near  you  ?  why,  they  throng  !  you  hardly  stir 

But  your  act  touches  them.     We  touch  afar. 

For  did  not  swarthy  slaves  of  yesterday 

Leap  in  their  bondage  at  the  Hebrews'  flight, 

Which  touched  them  through  the  thrice  millennial  dark? 

But  you  can  find  the  sufferer  you  need 

With  touch  less  subtle. 

ARMGART 

Who  has  need  of  me  ? 

WALPURGA 

Love  finds  the  need  it  fills  .  .  . 

So  Positivism,  like  Christianity,  sets  its  face  against 
suicide,  —  another  illustration  of  the  fact  that  this 
system  is  but  the  morality  of  Christianity.  You  may 
partake  of  the  largesse  of  nature,  yet  be  paupers  of 
grace.     Grace  holds,  though  nature  fails. 

She  is  remorseless  where  the  morale  is  at  stake,  as  is 
seen  in  her  treatment  of  Savonarola,  and  in  her  unan- 
swerable position  against  Young  and  Cumming.  And 
she  had  a  direct  hand  in  removing  the  prevailing 
pietistic  notion  that  right  actions  should  be  performed 
on  earth  because  of  rewards  laid  up  in  heaven.^  "  That 

*  As  an  indication  of  this  changed  feeling,  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  the  latest  revised  hymnal  of  the  Episcopal  church  omits  the 
hymn  '  For  the  Apostle's  glorious  company,'  the  last  stanza  of  which 

is: 

For  martyrs  who  with  rapture-kindled  eye, 
Saw  the  bright  crown  descending  from  the  sky, 
And  died  to  grasp  it,  Thee  we  glorify. 

This  was  hymn  i86  of  the  previous  edition.  The  reason  given  for  the 
omission  by  one  of  the  bishops  of  the  committee  of  revision  is  that 
the  idea  of  suffering  the  death  of  martyrdom  in  order  to  grasp  even  a 
heavenly  crown  is  an  idea  unworthy  of  a  virile  Christianity. 


172  George  Eliot 

is  the  path  we  all  like,"  she  says  —  and  her  picture  of 
Maggie  here  contains  a  reminiscent  hint  of  her  own 
girlhood  —  "that  is  the  path  we  all  like  when  we  set 
out  on  our  abandonment  of  egoism  —  the  path  of 
martyrdom  and  endurance,  where  the  palm-branches 
grow,  rather  than  the  steep  highway  of  tolerance,  just 
allowance,  and  self-blame,  where  there  are  no  leafy 
honors  to  be  gathered  and  worn." 

But  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  separate  the 
record  of  her  personal  religious  beliefs,  as  recorded 
in  her  diary  and  letters,  —  not  intended  for  publication, 
—  from  the  artistic  work  of  her  fictions :  we  must 
judge  her  from  that  latter  absolutely,  and  not  relatively 
from  the  other.  In  the  letter  to  Dr.  AUbut  quoted 
by  Oscar  Browning,^  she  says :  "  You  must  perceive 
the  bent  of  my  mind  is  conservative  rather  than  de- 
structive, and  that  denial  has  been  wrung  from  me  by 
hard  experience  —  not  adopted  as  a  pleasant  rebellion. 
Still,  I  see  clearly  that  we  ought,  each  of  us,  not  to 
sit  down  and  wail,  but  to  be  heroic  and  constructive, 
if  possible,  like  the  strong  souls  who  lived  before,  as 
in  other  cases  of  religious  decay."  Her  genius  was 
utterly  opposed  to  all  attacks  upon  vital  current  be- 
lief; not  only  because  it  was  vital,  and  therefore  min- 
istering to  the  public  good,  but  because,  even  though 
she  could  not  sympathize  intellectually  with  all  its 
developments,  she  would  not  hurt  those  who  loved 
and  trusted  her.^     This  is  why  she  would  not  write 

1  '  Life  of  George  Eliot,'  by  Oscar  Browning.  Walter  Scott,  Lon- 
don, 1890,  p.  119. 

2  "  Pray  don't  ever  ask  me  again  not  to  rob  a  man  of  his  religious 
belief,  as  if  you  thought  my  mind  tended  to  such  robbery.  I  have 
too  profound  a  conviction  of  the  efficacy  that  lies  in  all  sincere  faith, 
and  the  spiritual  blight  that  comes  with  no-faith,  to  have  any  nega- 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       173 

reviews  after  the  awakening  of  her  creative  nature. 
She  had  to  do  with  humanity,  which  means  the  whole 
man,  including  the  heart;  reviewing  was  too  apt  to 
overlook  the  heart  in  the  concentration  of  its  gaze 
upon  the  head.  She  wished  to  be  a  religious  writer 
because  she  wished  to  help  the  whole  man ;  and  only 

tive  propagandisra  in  me.  I  have  very  little  sympathy  with  Free- 
thinkers as  a  class,  and  have  lost  all  interest  in  mere  antagonism  to 
religious  doctrines.  I  care  only  to  know,  if  possible,  the  lasting 
meaning  that  lies  in  all  religious  doctrine  from  the  beginning  till 
now."  —  Letter  to  Madame  Bodichon, '  Life,'  vol.  ii.,  p.  343. 

"All  the  great  religions  of  the  world,  historically  considered,  are 
rightly  the  objects  of  deep  reverence  and  sympathy  —  they  are  the 
record  of  spiritual  struggles  which  are  the  types  of  our  own.  This  is 
to  me  pre-eminently  true  of  Hebrewism  and  Christianity,  on  which  my 
own  youth  was  nourished.  And  in  this  sense  I  have  no  antagonism 
towards  any  religious  belief,  but  a  strong  outflow  of  sympathy.  Every 
community  met  to  worship  the  highest  Good  (which  is  understood  to 
be  expressed  by  God)  carries  me  along  in  its  main  current ;  and  if 
there  were  not  reasons  against  my  following  such  an  inclination,  I 
should  go  to  church  or  chapel  constantly,  for  the  sake  of  the  delight- 
ful emotions  of  fellowship  which  come  over  me  in  religious  assem- 
blies—  the  very  nature  of  such  assemblies  being  the  recognition  of  a 
binding  belief  or  spiritual  law,  which  is  to  lift  us  into  willing  obedience, 
and  save  us  from  the  slavery  of  unregulated  passion  or  impulse. 
And  with  regard  to  other  people,  it  seems  to  me  that  those  who  have 
no  definite  conviction  which  constitutes  a  protesting  faith,  may  often 
more  beneficially  cherish  the  good  within  them  and  be  better  members 
of  society  by  a  conformity  based  on  the  recognized  good  in  the  public 
belief,  than  by  a  non-conformity  which  has  nothing  but  negatives  to 
utter.  Not,  of  course,  if  the  conformity  would  be  accompanied  by  a 
consciousness  of  hypocrisy.  That  is  a  question  for  the  individual 
conscience  to  settle.  But  there  is  enough  to  be  said  on  the  different 
points  of  view  from  which  conformity  may  be  regarded,  to  hinder  a 
ready  judgment  against  those  who  continue  to  conform  after  ceasing 
to  believe  in  the  ordinary  sense.  But  with  the  utmost  largeness  of 
allowance  for  the  difficulty  of  deciding  in  special  cases,  it  must  remain 
true  that  the  highest  lot  is  to  have  definite  beliefs  about  which  you  feel 
that  '  necessity  is  laid  upon  you  '  to  declare  them,  as  something  better 
which  you  are  bound  to  try  and  give  to  those  who  have  the  worse."  — 
Letter  to  Mr.  Cross, '  Life,'  vol.  iii.,  p.  216. 


174  George  Eliot 

in  fiction  can  art  and  morality  come  together  for  such 
a  purpose.  The  sadness  of  her  novels  is  not,  indeed, 
because  of  a  loss  of  "  Evangelical "  faith.  She  felt,  in 
common  with  all  conscientious  well-wishers  and  hard 
workers  for  an  improved,  the  burden  of  an  unimproved, 
humanity,  and  she  felt  it  more  intensely  than  most. 
It  was  largely  an  impersonal  burden  that  she  bore  — 
the  burden  of  Nineveh,  the  burden  of  the  world  —  and 
it  was  calculated  to  enforce  profoundly  sober  tones. 
So  far  as  mere  gloom  is  concerned,  no  portion  of  her 
life,  as  revealed  in  her  letters,  is  so  full  of  shadow  as 
that  early  part  of  it  which  felt  the  torture  of  the  Cal- 
vinistic  screws.  There  is  a  general  uplifting  of  spirit 
and  an  increasing  serenity  of  vision  as  that  period 
retrogresses.  While  she  does  not  wear  her  religion 
like  a  prophylactic  ring,  her  agnosticism  is  not  mili- 
tant, like  Huxley's ;  and  it  appears  in  the  novels  only 
on  the  side  which  is  the  negative  side  of  Christianity. 
She  recognized  with  a  satisfying  fulness  that  philo- 
sophical intolerance  is  more  repugnant  than  religious 
intolerance,  and  her  hard  raps  are  for  the  sects  of 
thought,  and  not  the  sects  of  faith.^     She  always  ac- 


^  "As  to  the  necessary  combinations  through  which  life  is  mani- 
fested, which  seem  to  present  themselves  to  you  as  a  hideous  fatalism 
which  ought  logically  to  petrify  your  volition, — have  they,  in  fact, 
any  such  influence  on  your  ordinary  course  of  action  in  the  primary 
affairs  of  your  existence  as  a  human,  social,  domestic  creature  ?  And 
if  they  don't  hinder  you  from  taking  measures  for  a  bath,  without 
which  you  know  that  you  cannot  secure  the  delicate  cleanliness  which 
is  your  second  nature,  why  should  they  hinder  you  from  a  line  of  re- 
solve in  a  higher  strain  of  duty  to  your  ideal,  both  for  yourself  and 
others  ?  But  the  consideration  of  molecular  physics  is  not  the  direct 
ground  of  human  love  and  moral  action,  any  more  than  it  is  the  direct 
means  of  composing  a  noble  picture  or  of  enjoying  great  music.  One 
might  as  well  hope  to  dissect  one's  own  body,  and  be  merry  in  doing 
it,  as  take  molecular  physics  (in  which  you  must  banish  from  your 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       175 

knowledged  the  mystery  that  lay  "  under  the  proc- 
esses." Her  soul  abhorred  all  negative  propaganda ; 
and  she  did  not  engage  in  that  worst  of  futilities  of 
making  her  opinions  mark  time  with  her  religion, 
because  her  opinions  were   her  religion. 

Indeed,  if  we  had  to  construct  her  religious  posi- 
tion solely  from  the  internal  evidence  of  her  fiction, 
—  which  is  really  all  we  do  have  to  do,  —  we  should 
place  her  faith  in  a  personal  God  several  degrees 
higher  than  we  know  it  was,  from  the  external  evi- 
dence, so  careful  was  she  not  to  intrude  metaphysical 
dogma  into  the  place  of  moral  sympathy.  Mr.  Myers 
has  pictured  in  burning  colors  his  impressions  of  her 
convictions  as  he  walked  with  her,  one  evening,  in 
the  Fellows  garden  at  Trinity,  listening  to  her  terribly 
earnest  utterances  as  to  the  inconceivability  of  God 
and  immortality,  and  the  peremptory  and  absolute 
need  of  duty: 

Never,  perhaps,  have  sterner  accents  affirmed  the  sover- 
eignty of  impersonal  and  unrecompensing  Law.  I  listened, 
and   night   fell ;    her   grave,  majestic    countenance  turned 

field  of  view  what  is  specifically  human)  to  be  your  dominant  guide, 
your  determiner  of  motives,  in  what  is  solely  human.  That  every 
study  has  its  bearing  on  every  other  is  true;  but  pain  and  relief,  love 
and  sorrow,  have  their  peculiar  history  which  make  an  experience 
and  knowledge  over  and  above  the  swing  of  atoms."  —  Letter  to  the 
Hon.  Mrs.  Ponsonby,  '  Life,'  vol.  iii.,  p.  245. 

"  I  should  urge  you  to  consider  your  early  religious  experience  as 
a  portion  of  valid  knowledge,  and  to  cherish  its  emotional  results  in 
relation  to  objects  and  ideas  which  are  either  substitutes  or  metamor- 
phoses of  the  earlier.  And  I  think  we  must  not  take  every  great 
physicist  —  or  other  *  ist '  —  for  an  apostle,  but  be  ready  to  suspect 
him  of  some  crudity  concerning  relations  that  lie  outside  his  special 
studies,  if  his  exposition  strands  us  on  results  that  seem  to  stultify  the 
most  ardent  massive  experience  of  mankind,  and  hem  up  the  best 
part  of  our  feelings  in  stagnation."  — Ib.^  vol.  iii.,  p.  253. 


176  George  Eliot 

towards  me  like  a  sibyl's  in  the  gloom ;  it  was  as  though  she 
removed  from  my  grasp,  one  by  one,  the  two  scrolls  of 
promise,  and  left  me  the  third  scroll  only,  awful  with  inevi- 
table fates.  And  when  we  stood  at  length  and  parted,  amid 
that  columnar  circuit  of  the  forest  trees,  beneath  the  last  twi- 
light of  starless  skies,  I  seemed  to  be  gazing  like  Titus  at 
Jerusalem  on  vacant  seats  and  empty  halls ;  in  a  sanctuary 
with  no  Presence  to  hallow  it,  and  a  heaven  left  lonely 
of  a  God.^ 

Yet  this  was  not  the  talk  of  her  books.  There  are 
no  positive  negations  there.  She  had  no  controversy 
with  faith,  and  she  longed  to  satisfy  "  the  need  of 
those  who  want  a  reason  for  living  in  the  absence  of 
what  has  been  called  consolatory  belief."  So  far  as 
she  had  herself  to  reckon  with,  she  regarded  "  reli- 
gious exercises  "  as  a  kind  of  opium  which  she  re- 
fused to  take,  preferring  wide-awake  pain  to  a 
drugged  unconsciousness.  But  she  frankly  acknowl- 
edges that  "  there  must  be  limits  or  negations "  in 
her  experience  which  may  screen  from  her  "  many 
possibilities  of  blessedness  for  our  suffering  human 
nature."  Where  faith  did  not  reconcile  with  reason, 
she  saw  not  faith,  but  unreason ;  and  "  as  a  strong 
body  struggles  against  fumes  with  the  more  violence 
when  they  begin  to  be  stifling,  a  strong  soul  struggles 
against  phantasies  with  all  the  more  alarmed  energy 
when  they  threaten  to  govern  in  the  place  of  thought." 
And  this  discriminating  power  was  of  service  in  re- 
straining her  from  that  implicit  acquiescence  in  the 
marvels  of  those  modern  "  isms  "  and  "  ologies  " 
which  have  wrecked  more  credulous  souls  of  high 
intelligence.     Her  analytical  tendency  is  sometimes 

1  Century  Magazine,  vol.  xxiii.,  p.  62. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       177 

her  misfortune,  but  her  letter  to  Mrs.  Stowe  is  an 
indication  of  its  beneficent  side: 


Perhaps  I  am  inclined,  under  the  influence  of  the  facts, 
physiological  and  psychological,  which  have  been  gathered 
of  late  years,  to  give  larger  place  to  the  interpretation  of 
vision-seeing  as  subjective  than  the  Professor  would  ap- 
prove. It  seems  difficult  to  limit  —  at  least  to  limit  with 
any  precision  —  the  possibility  of  confounding  sense  by  im- 
pressions, derived  from  inward  conditions,  with  those  wliich 
are  directly  dependent  on  external  stimulus.  In  fact,  the 
division  between  within  and  without  in  this  sense  seems  to 
become  every  year  a  more  subtle  and  bewildering  problem. 

Your  experience  with  the  planchette  is  amazing ;  but  that 
the  words  which  you  found  it  to  have  written  were  dic- 
tated by  the  spirit  of  Charlotte  Bronte  is  to  me  (whether 
rightly  or  not)  so  enormously  improbable  that  I  could 
only  accept  it  if  every  condition  was  laid  bare,  and  every 
other  explanation  demonstrated  to  be  impossible.  If  it 
were  another  spirit  aping  Charlotte  Bronte,  —  if  here  and 
there  at  rare  spots  and  among  people  of  a  certain  tempera- 
ment, or  even  at  many  spots  and  among  people  of  all 
temperaments,  tricksy  spirits  are  liable  to  rise  as  a  sort  of 
earth-bubbles  and  set  furniture  in  movement,  and  tell  things 
which  we  either  know  already  or  should  be  as  well  without 
knowing,  —  I  must  frankly  confess  that  I  have  but  a  feeble 
interest  in  these  doings,  feeling  my  life  very  short  for  the 
supreme  and  awful  revelations  of  a  more  orderly  and  intel- 
ligible kind,  which  I  shall  die  with  an  imperfect  knowledge 
of.  If  there  were  miserable  spirits  whom  we  could  help, 
then  I  think  we  should  pause  and  have  patience  with  their 
trivial-mindedness  J  but  otherwise  I  don't  feel  bound  to 
study  them  more  than  I  am  bound  to  study  the  special 
follies  of  a  particular  phase  of  human  society.  Others,  who 
feel  differently,  and  are  attracted  towards  this  study,  are 

12 


178  George  Eliot 

making  an  experiment  for  us  as  to  whether  anything  better 
than  bewilderment  can  come  of  it.  At  present,  it  seems  to 
me  that  to  rest  any  fundamental  part  of  rehgion  on  such  a 
basis  is  a  melancholy  misguidance  of  men's  minds  from  the 
true  sources  of  high  and  pure  emotion.^ 

So  little  ground  did  she  give  for  offence  to  the 
"  little  ones "  that  a  reviewer  in  the  Westminster^ 
after  her  death,  makes  complaint  that  her  art  caused 
her  to  sympathize  unduly  with  the  old  creeds,  con- 
sidering her  abandonment  of  Christian  dogma,  and 
that  the  claims  of  the  new  creed  and  the  new  life 
were  not  directly  recognized  at  all.  But  she  did  all 
she  could  do  as  an  artist,  both  positively  for  the  old 
beliefs  and  negatively  for  the  new.  Indeed,  the  most 
adverse  criticisms  of  her  art  have  been  based  on  what 
has  been  taken  as  its  didactic  subservience  to  her  mor- 
ality ;  and  it  is  subservient  in  the  sense  that  the  music  of 
a  mass  is  subservient  to  the  idea  of  worship.  She 
admires  Sir  Christopher  Cheverel  for  the  virility  of  his 
art  enthusiasms,  which  places  them  on  a  moral  plane. 

"  An  obstinate,  crotchety  man,"  said  his  neighbors.  But 
I,  who  have  seen  Cheverel  Manor  as  he  bequeathed  it  to  his 
heirs,  rather  attribute  that  unswerving  architectural  purpose 
of  his,  conceived  and  carried  out  through  long  years  of 
systematic  personal  exertion,  to  something  of  the  fervor  of 
genius,  as  well  as  inflexibility  of  will ;  and  in  walking  through 
those  rooms,  with  their  splendid  ceilings  and  their  meagre 
furniture,  which  tell  how  all  the  spare  money  had  been  ab- 
sorbed before  personal  comfort  was  thought  of,  I  have  felt 
that  there  dwelt  in  this  old  English  baronet  some  of  that 
sublime  spirit  which  distinguishes  art  from  luxury,  and  wor- 
ships beauty  apart  from  self-indulgence. 

^  '  Life/  vol.  iii.,  pp.  160  seq.  See  also  a  former  letter  to  Mrs. 
Stowe,  on  the  same  subject,  '  Life,*  vol.  iii.,  pp.  92  seq. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       179 

She  could  not  have  formed  new  religions,  in  justice 
to  her  reiterated  pleas  for  faithfulness  to  the  old 
ideals.  For  while  it  is  true  that  there  is  in  her  Hfe 
a  sad  lack  of  that  peculiar  humility  of  the  simple 
Christian  which  makes  the  wise  things  of  the  world 
foolish,  there  is  nevertheless  a  saving  modesty  which 
prevents  her  rashness  from  running  the  full  length  of 
out-and-out  Free  Thinking. 

I  dislike  extremely  a  passage  in  which  you  appear  to 
consider  the  disregard  of  individuals  as  a  lofty  condition  of 
mind.  My  own  experience  and  development  deepen  every 
day  my  conviction  that  our  moral  progress  may  be  measured 
by  the  degree  in  which  we  sympathize  with  individual  suffer- 
ing and  individual  joy.  The  fact  that  in  the  scheme  of 
things  we  see  a  constant  and  tremendous  sacrifice  of  indi- 
viduals is,  it  seems  to  me,  only  one  of  the  many  proofs  that 
urge  upon  us  our  total  inability  to  find  in  our  own  natures 
a  key  to  the  divine  mystery.  I  could  more  readily  turn 
Christian,  and  worship  Jesus  again,  than  embrace  a  Theism 
which  professes  to  explain  the  proceedings  of  God.^ 

She  saw  that  a  rationalistic  creed  is  a  contradictory 
impossibility;  that  rationalism  is  possible,  and  that  a 
creed  is  possible,  but  not  the  two  in  combination. 
**  Hopes,"  indeed,  "  have  precarious  life," 

"  But  faithfulness  can  feed  on  suffering, 
And  knows  no  disappointment." 

And  duty  is  the  residuum.  We  see  it  through  a 
light  magnified  by  religion,  because  all  of  George 
Eliot's  religion  is  in  it.  What  makes  the  moral  phi- 
losophies so  spiritually  dull  is  the  mechanical  divorce 
of  rehgion  from  morality  generally  to  be  discovered 

1  Letter  to  Charles  Bray, '  Life,'  vol.  i.,  p.  472. 


i8o  George  Eliot 

in  them,  as  though  the  two  belonged  to  separate 
spheres.  George  Eliot's  morality  shines  with  a  bril- 
liance cast  from  Christianity.  It  is  as  a  light  perme- 
ating cathedral  glass.  That  pale  worker  in  the  study 
bends  not  the  knee  in  the  adjoining  minster,  but  the 
glow  of  the  minster's  window  fills  the  workshop. 
When  'Felix  Holt'  appeared,  a  writer  in  a  religious 
periodical  exclaimed :  "  Felix's  religious  system,  it 
seems  to  us,  borrows  everything  from  Christianity 
except  its  creed,  and  is  represented  as  fulfilling  the 
commands  of  the  Beatitudes  without  looking  for  their 
blessing."  That  is  true,  and  had  George  Eliot  read 
it,  she  would  have  been  pleased  with  her  infringement 
of  the  rule  against  the  reading  of  reviews. 

She  does  not  always  see  duty  in  the  soft  raiment 
belonging  to  kings'  houses.  She  stands  at  times 
under  the  thunder-scarred  tops  of  tall  Sinais,  and  lies 
prone  on  desert  sands  as  the  storm  hurtles  by.  The 
black  tempest  of  Maggie's  great  temptation  was  thus 
pierced  by  the  white  light  of  moral  truth.  "  A  great 
terror  was  upon  her,  as  if  she  were  ever  and  anon  seeing 
where  she  stood,  by  great  flashes  of  lightning,  and  then 
again  stretched  forth  her  hands  in  the  darkness."  ^ 

1  The  comparison  which  is  sometimes  found  between  George  Eliot 
and  Lucretius  is  not  really  a  comparison,  but  a  contrast.  He  was  con- 
cerned with  causes ;  she,  with  laws.  He  "  denied  divinely  the  divine ; " 
in  George  Eliot's  fiction  there  is  not  even  the  religious  denial  of  re- 
ligion. Revelation,  if  we  come  to  the  final  analysis,  has  no  place  in 
the  scope  of  phenomena  viewed  as  working  in  the  domain  of  law;  and 
as  George  Eliot  confines  our  human  vision  to  that  universe  as  the  one 
most  easily  comprehensible,  her  religious  influence  is  greater  than  it 
would  have  been  had  she  been  moved  by  "  orthodox  "  zeal  to  impose  a 
revelation  upon  her  art,  to  explain  supernaturally  what,  in  art,  may 
better  be  explained  naturally.  The  Christian  reader  is  quite  capable 
of  seeing  the  supernatural  back  of  the  natural,  and  working  through 
it ;  for  he  believes  that  God  is  in  law  as  well  as  that  He  is  the  cause 
of  it. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy      1 8 1 

Apart  from  ironical  usage,  and  such  places  where 
one  would  naturally  expect  it,  as  in  Tryan's  talks  with 
Janet,  Dinah's  exhortations,  and  Savonarola's  preach- 
ing, the  word  '  sin '  occurs  less  than  a  dozen  times  in 
her  novels,  and  not  once,  I  believe,  in  her  two  latest 
works.  Taken  together,  George  Eliot's  full  definition 
of  the  "  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin  "  is  something  like 
this:  Sin  is  the  incurrence  of  a  necessity  for  deceit, 
and  the  cause  of  suffering.  And  so  diffusive  is  that 
suffering  that  even  justice  becomes  a  retribution 
spreading  "  beyond  its  mark  in  pulsations  of  un- 
merited pain."  It  is  a  lie  against  the  truth  of  nature, 
and  is  therefore  unnatural.  It  is  a  lie  against  the 
wise  order  of  the  universe,  and  its  result  is  therefore 
disorder  and  discordant  unhappiness.  It  is  what 
makes  that  hard  crust  around  the  soul  which  can 
be  pierced  by  no  pitying  voice.  It  is  the  cold  damp 
vault  where  despair  abides,  and  where  the  morning 
sun  and  sweet  pure  air  are  not  felt.  It  is  vain  personal 
regrets  indulged  in  to  the  harm  of  helpful  activities.  If 
it  aims  at  particular  concrete  things,  particular  con- 
crete consequences  will  follow.  It  is  not  a  mere 
"  question  of  doctrine  and  inward  penitence."  Its 
incorporate  past  will  rise  in  unmanageable  solidity  be- 
fore the  eyes  of  the  present.  It  is  the  reverse  and 
the  denial  of  the  need  of  the  prayer  — 

Give  me  no  light,  great  heaven,  but  such  as  turns 

To  energy  of  human  fellowship, 

No  powers  save  the  growing  heritage 

That  makes  completer  manhood.  ^ 

And  on  its  border-land  you  are  "  harassed  by  assaults 
from  the  other  side  of  the  boundary." 

1  The  motto  of  The  Lifted  Veil,' '  Life,'  vol.  iii.,  p.  195. 


1 82  George  Eliot 

Now,  is  not  this  what  theologians  tell  us  the  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost  is?  Ought  we  not  to  be 
satisfied  with  it?  It  is  just  as  much  a  Psalm  of  Life 
as  Longfellow's,  although  it  lacks  the  Christian  tele- 
ology. Her  grand  Nemesis,  with  the  swords  in  her 
hands,  is  as  the  faces  which  rise  unbidden  in  the 
night;  and  in  the  solemn  watches  we  hear  the  stifled 
cries.     She  echoes  her  sister  poet's  thought : 

There  's  not  a  crime 
But  takes  its  proper  change  out  still  in  crime, 
If  once  rung  on  the  counter  of  this  world. 

And  she  construes  crime  to  be  every  aim  that  ends 
with  self.  In  spite  of  all  the  subtle  efforts  of  Bulstrode 
to  hide  his  past,  that  past  rose  before  him  at  the  mo- 
ment when  he  thought  himself  the  most  secure ;  and 
when  Arthur  Donnithorne  flattered  himself  that  all 
was  smooth  sailing  at  last,  the  storm  of  his  —  as  he 
foolishly  thought  forgotten  —  sin  drove  him  a  wreck 
upon  the  rocks.  Her  sinners  are  holden  by  the  cords 
of  their  sins :  it  is  as  if  they  were  in  the  clutch  of 
some  great  sea-monster.  She  echoes  the  Scriptural 
emphasis  that  your  sins  will  find  you  out.  They  rise 
incarnate  in  her  novels  and  cry  for  vengeance,  even 
as  Baldassare  rose  across  the  sight  of  the  dying  Tito, 
and  as  the  sin  of  Gwendolen  in  marrying  Grandcourt 
rose  before  her  in  terrifying  visions  after  his  death, 
which  she  had  —  can  there  be  any  doubt  of  it?  — 
caused.^ 

^  Here,  again,  may  be  seen  the  greater  fulness  of  Christianity,  in 
that  its  doctrine  of  hell  is  but  the  Nemesis  continued  into  future  con- 
ditions, and  arranged  for  such  as  fail  to  have  their  sins  found  out  in 
this  present  life.  We  see  that  in  many  cases  sins  do  not  find  out  the 
living  sinner,  and  yet  we  are  told  that  our  sins  will  find  us  out ;  so  if 
not  here,  then  somewhere  else.     What  is  hell  but  Nemesis  ?    This  is 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       183 

Nor  is  she  one  of  those  fine  Chateaubriands  she 
makes  P^elix  ridicule,  who  are  forever  shooting  in  the 
air.  "  Your  dunce  who  can't  do  his  sums  has  always 
a  taste  for  the  infinite.  Sir,  do  you  know  what  a 
rhomboid  is?  Oh,  no,  I  don't  value  these  things  with 
limits."  Whatever  her  hand  found  to  do,  she  did 
it  with  might.  Felix  sees  through  Harold's  gener- 
alities about  a  bridge  being  a  good  thing  to  make, 
though  half  the  men  working  at  it  are  rogues. 

"Oh,  yes!"  said  Felix,  scornfully;  "give  me  a  handful 
of  generalities  and  analogies,  and  I  '11  undertake  to  justify 
Burke  and  Hare,  and  prove  them  benefactors  of  their  species. 
I  '11  tolerate  no  nuisances  but  such  as  I  can't  help ;  and  the 
question  now  is,  not  whether  we  can  do  away  with  all  the 
nuisances  in  the  world,  but  with  a  particular  nuisance  under 
our  noses." 

It  is  this  readiness  to  do,  when  once  moved  by 
genuine  conviction  that  he  ought  to  do,  that  saves 
Deronda.  A  little  too  much  swaying  between  the 
infinite  Good  and  the  finite  realization  of  that  Good  in 
himself  would  have  ruined  the  character.  He  could 
very  easily  have  been  made  one  of  those  "  large  "  souls 
who  are  ridiculous  in  a  working-day  world.  As  it  is, 
he  may  not  be  considered  a  success  from  the  "  hust- 
ler's "  standpoint ;  but  there  are  other  points  of  view 
than  the  commercial  traveller's,  highly  important  as 
those  doubtless  are.  When  Deronda  is  called,  he 
answers ;  and  the  largeness  and  vagueness  of  the 
scheme  makes  the  obedience  all  the  more  laudable ; 

not  a  doctrinal  treatise,  and  I  am  not  arguing  for  "  orthodoxy."  I  have 
no  mental  conception  of  the  quality  or  of  the  duration  of  future  pun- 
ishment, and  I  think  it  a  waste  of  time  to  theorize  about  it.  I  merely 
wish  to  emphasize,  in  passing,  the  incompleteness  of  Positivism  as 
compared  with  the  rounded  fulness  of  Christianity. 


184  George  Eliot 

for,  although  we  think  it  a  mistake,  he  was  willing  to 
risk  a  probable  failure  in  the  light  of  a  clear  duty; 
which  is  the  point  at  issue.  We  must  look  at  it  from 
his  standpoint,  not  from  ours.  He  was,  at  the  last, 
"  practical,"  although  engaged  in  an  impracticable 
scheme ;  and  was  so  from  the  first,  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word,  because  he  acted  in  accordance  with  the 
promptings  of  a  chivalric  nature  which  did  not  allow 
itself  to  be  confused  by  the  every-day  standards  of 
"  Society,"  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be  twisted  into 
quixotic  shape  by  too  great  a  rebound  from  those 
standards.  He  is  a  combination  of  honor  and  com- 
mon-sense ;  and  if  there  was  a  fight  on  between  him 
and  Grandcourt,  I  should  bet  on  Deronda. 


XII 

This  feeling  for  the  immediate  good  is  strangely, 
and  yet  logically,  mixed  with  a  feeling  for  heredity. 
For  distance  is  not  measurable  by  time,  but  by  radi- 
cal differences  in  affinity;  and  ancestral  claims  are 
binding  because  they  feed  the  feeling  for  and  nourish 
the  habit  of  a  close  filial  reverence :  they  feed  it  and 
are  therefore  its  parents.  The  indignation  of  Romola 
is  against  the  treachery  to  her  father's  memory.  A 
reconstructed  Presence  is  to  move  in  the  old  places, 
and  it  is  as  much  a  real  Presence  to  the  devout  imag- 
ination as  the  actual  presence  was  before  to  the  visual 
eye.  We  are  a  part  of  it,  bone  of  its  bone,  and  it 
rules  us  from  the  grave. 

George  Eliot  pushes  the  doctrine  to  its  furthest 
limits.  Squire  Cass  was  hardly  a  man  to  inspire  an 
affectionate  memory ;  yet  Nancy  preserved  **  sacredly 
in  a  place  of  honor  "  the  relics  of  her  husband's  de- 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy      185 

parted  father, — a  kind  of  Chinese  worship,  you  see. 
It  was  the  call  from  Jewish  blood  to  Jewish  blood  that 
stirred  the  pulses  of  Deronda,  although  the  author, 
foreseeing  a  difficulty  there,  turned  her  hero  around 
his  hard  corner  by  making  him  fall  in  love  with  a 
Jewess ;  and  not  only  that,  but  the  sister  of  the  man 
who  put  such  an  impossible  burden  upon  him. 

Without  doubt,  her  theories  of  heredity  are  the 
direct  result  of  her  biological  reading  with  Lewes ; 
she  extending,  as  is  her  wont,  to  the  psychical  the 
known  laws  of  the  physical.  The  solidarity  of  man- 
kind may  be  preserved  in  its  healthful  order  only  by 
each  unit  keeping  true  to  its  intimate  units ;  and  what 
so  intimate  as  the  family?  This  is  the  theme  of 
'  The  Spanish  Gypsy.'  Silva  is  dominated  by  his 
past,  by  the  "  mystery  of  his  Spanish  blood ;  "  and 
the  attempted  escape  from  this  dominion  makes  the 
tragedy.  His  sudden  killing  of  Zarca  is  explainable 
only  by  the  reassertion  of  this  rule,  because  there  was 
nothing  but  hate  between  him  and  the  Prior,  whose 
death  he  was  nevertheless  thus  moved  to  revenge. 
In  leaving  his  place  he  disturbed  — 

.  .  .  the  rich  heritage 
Of  nations  fathered  by  a  mighty  past,  — 

a  past  which  was  a  chambered  Nautilus  of  memo- 
ries, each  linked  with  each  in  binding  chains.  Why, 
the  very  breeze  and  the  breath  of  the  sea  are  charged 
with  them,  for  she  chiefly  thinks  of  the  Mediterranean 
as  "  the  Mid-sea  which  moans  with  memories." 

Still  further,  the  actual  catastrophe  is  brought 
about  by  what  some  would  say  was  an  act  of  treach- 
ery; and  yet  fair  warning  was  given  to  Silva  that, 
under  certain  conditions,   the  secret  would   not  be 


1 86  George  Eliot 

kept.  These  conditions  were  that  if  Sephardo,  a 
Jew,  could  benefit  his  own  people  by  using  the  secret 
in  their  behalf,  he  would  not  fail  to  do  so.  Loyalty 
to  his  kindred  overrode  loyalty  to  the  trusting  Silva, 
and  the  tragedy  ensued. 

Zarca  is  the  embodiment  of  the  contrast  to  Silva. 
He  is  the  true  unit  remaining  in  its  place.  The 
grandeur  of  the  conception  is  colossal.  The  inefface- 
able memory  of  the  past  is  all  the  more  resurgent 
because  it  is  a  past  of  doom,  despised  and  excommu- 
nicate; and  by  this  past  he  calls  Fedalma  to  her 
proper  future,  which  she  must  tread  "  with  naked 
bleeding  feet,"  a  future  perhaps  like  the  past  — 

Where  no  man  praised  it  and  where  no  church  blessed. 

For  my  part,  my  sympathies  are  with  Silva.  The 
claims  of  heredity  may  be  stretched  too  far.  Some- 
thing is  due  to  the  present  as  such,  and  the  demands 
of  the  past  may  become  too  shadowy  to  be  effectual. 
The  tendency  to  variation  under  conditions  of  en- 
vironment is  as  natural  as  the  hereditary  principle. 
There  may  be  historic  sympathy  without  historic 
Tightness ;  and  issue  must  be  taken  with  "  that 
Supreme,  the  irreversible  Past."  The  past  may 
be  irreversible,  but  it  is  not  perforce  supreme,  and 
if  really  dead,  let  it,  in  God's  name,  bury  its  dead. 
We  feel  that  Fedalma  is  justified  in  her  outburst 
against  her  father: 

Stay  !   never  utter  it ! 
If  it  can  part  my  lot  from  his  whose  love 
Has  chosen  me.     Talk  not  of  oaths,  of  birth, 
Of  men  as  numerous  as  the  dim  white  stars,  — 
As  cold  and  distant  too,  for  my  heart's  pulse. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       187 

No! 
I  belong  to  him  who  loves  me  —  whom  I  love  — 
Who  chose  me  —  whom  I  chose  —  to  whom  I  pledged 
A  woman's  truth.    And  that  is  nature  too, 
Issuing  a  tresher  law  than  laws  of  birth. 

But,  aside  from  this,  the  ethics  of  brotherhood  are 
the  only  saving  ethics.  They  teach  that  a  wrong 
against  another  is  an  injury  to  society,  to  that  vast 
solidarity  which  through  all  its  vastness  feels  the 
shock  of  every  evil  deed,  and  trembles  with  delight 
at  each  impact  of  good.  George  Eliot's  paper  in 
*  Theophrastus'  —  *  Moral  Swindlers ' —  illuminates  the 
needful  lesson  that  a  man's  moral  stature  is  not  to  be 
taken  simply  by  his  home  life ;  that  he  may  be  a 
faithful  husband  and  a  tender  father,  and  yet  a  bad 
public  man,  and  effect  more  harm  through  his  public 
misdeeds  than  another  man  of  high  civic  virtue  but 
of  loose  personal  habits.  She  widens  the  view  and 
the  nomenclature  of  morality,  and  entirely  removes  it 
from  the  narrow  limits  in  which  that  word  is  usually 
confined.  She  says  of  her  imaginary  Florentine  in 
the  Proem  to  '  Romola,'  "  He  felt  the  evils  of  his  time, 
for  he  was  a  man  of  public  spirit,  and  public  spirit 
can  never  be  wholly  immoral,  since  its  essence  is  care 
for  a  common  good." 


XIII 

And  it  is  time  to  say  that  the  emphasis  she  lays 
upon  the  wrong  done  to  others  by  the  careless  as- 
sumption of  unauthorized  relations  between  the  sexes 
is  not  the  result  of  remorse  at  any  false  step  of  her 
own ;  but  is  intended  to  mark  the  difference  between 


1 88  George  Eliot 

such  relationships  and  her  own,  as  she  conceived  this 
difference.  That  she  erred,  many  believe  who  at  the 
same  time  absolve  her  in  their  minds  from  all  con- 
scious wrong-doing;  the  barrier  between  her  and 
George  Sand  is  as  the  barrier  between  day  and  night. 
Feuerbach  says,  in  the  work  George  Eliot  translated : 
"  That  alone  is  a  religious  marriage  which  is  a  true 
marriage,  which  corresponds  to  the  essence  of 
marriage-love."  And  she  says  of  Jane  Eyre,  "  All  self- 
sacrifice  is  good,  but  one  would  like  it  to  be  in  a  some- 
what nobler  cause  than  that  of  a  diabolical  law  which 
chains  a  man,  soul  and  body,  to  a  putrefying  carcass," 
—  a  vitally  interesting  opinion,  because  it  not  only 
marks  a  clear  distinction  between  George  Eliot  and 
Charlotte  Bronte,  but  also  because  she  considered 
Rochester's  excuse  as  valid  as  her  own. 

The  question  is  not  so  simple  as  some  have  sup- 
posed. The  non-existence  of  the  divorce  court  in 
1854  was  not  the  legal  barrier  to  marriage  between 
Lewes  and  Miss  Evans,  because  that  court  requires 
conditions  which  could  not  have  been  complied  with 
by  the  suing  party.  But  her  action  was  nevertheless 
a  protest  against  what  she  thought  was  cruelly  unjust 
legislation,  or,  rather,  a  cruel  lack  of  just  legislation. 
It  is  fair  to  assume  that  there  was  more  of  impulse  in 
the  step  than  she  was  conscious  of.  It  is  the  same 
Marian  Evans  who  at  various  stages  repudiates  music 
and  gives  up  going  to  church  with  a  suddenness  that 
could  not  avoid  a  collision  with  her  father.  She  does 
not  appear  to  have  blamed  herself  for  this  conflict  be- 
tween personal  conviction  and  filial  affection  beyond 
the  mere  regret  that  it  should  have  occurred ;  nor  is 
there  any  self-blame  evident  for  her  union  with  Lewes, 
although,  as  we  have  seen,  there  is  an  ever-wakeful 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       189 

desire  to  differentiate  such  a  union  from  loose  and 
immoral  connections.  It  is  the  same  Miss  Evans  who 
surrendered  Miss  Lewis  for  Hennell's  *  Inquiry,'  —  nay, 
who  gave  up  an  imperfect  conception  of  Jesus  Christ 
for  an  imperfect  conception  of  Mr.  Bray;  and  who 
did  it  with  joy.  Her  character  had  developed,  but 
her  temperament  had  not  changed. 

Yet  she  would  have  warmly  repudiated  the  charge 
that  she  had  violated  the  sacramental  nature  of  mar- 
riage in  her  union  with  a  man  whose  wife  was  living; 
and  she  would  have  done  so  on  the  ground  that  while 
he  was  at  one  time  joined  to  that  wife  by  a  solemn 
moral  obligation,  such  an  obligation  had  ceased  to 
exist,  and  that  the  true  marriage,  after  that  cessation, 
was  with  her,  Marian  Evans.  She  did  not  violate  a 
home,  for  there  was  no  longer  any  home.  Mr. 
Lewes'  sons  took  the  same  view,  and  always  called 
her  "  mother."  She  took  the  deepest  interest  in  their 
welfare,  and  Charles,  the  only  surviving  son  of  George 
Lewes,  became  her  heir.^  Her  view  was  that  her  act 
was  against  the  social  law  accidentally  in  force  at  that 
time,  but  not  against  the  fundamental  idea  of  a  sacred 
marriage  tie ;  and  she  never  wavered  from  that  view. 
Lewes  was  always  to  her  her  "  husband,"  and  she 
insisted  that  her  friends  must  so  consider  the  relation- 
ship, or  cease  to  be  her  friends. 

No  author  has  dwelt  with  fuller  force  on  the  bind- 
ing relations  of  the  marriage  tie,  notwithstanding  this 
living  protest  against  what  she  deemed  an  unjust  law. 

She  who  willingly  lifts  up  the  veil  of  her  married  life  has 
profaned  it  from  a  sanctuary  into  a  vulgar  place. 

^  Leslie  Stephen :  article  '  Lewes,'  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy. 


190  George  Eliot 

"  Marriage  is  so  unlike  everything  else.  There  is  some- 
tliing  even  awful  in  the  nearness  it  brings.  Even  if  we 
loved  some  one  else  better  than  —  than  those  we  were 
married  to,  it  would  be  no  use" — poor  Dorothea,  in  her 
palpitating  anxiety,  could  only  seize  her  language  brokenly 
—  "I  mean,  marriage  drinks  up  all  our  power  of  giving  or 
getting  any  blessedness  in  that  sort  of  love.  I  know  it  may 
be  very  dear,  but  it  murders  our  marriage  —  and  the 
marriage  stays  with  us  like  a  murder  —  and  everything  else 
is  gone." 

She  paused.  There  was  something  else  to  be  stripped 
away  from  her  belonging  to  that  past  on  which  she  was 
going  to  turn  her  back  forever.  She  put  her  thumb  and 
her  forefinger  to  her  betrothal  ring ;  but  they  rested  there 
without  drawing  it  off.  Romola's  mind  had  been  rushing 
with  an  impetuous  current  towards  this  act  for  which  she 
was  preparing :  the  act  of  quitting  a  husband  who  had  dis- 
appointed all  her  trust ;  the  act  of  breaking  an  outward  tie 
that  no  longer  represented  the  inward  bond  of  love.  But 
that  force  of  outward  symbols  by  which  our  active  life  is 
knit  together  so  as  to  make  an  inexorable  external  identity 
for  us,  not  to  be  shaken  by  our  wavering  consciousness, 
gave  a  strange  effect  to  this  simple  movement  towards  tak- 
ing off  her  ring,  —  a  movement  which  was  but  a  small 
sequence  of  her  energetic  resolution.  It  brought  a  vague 
but  arresting  sense  that  she  was  somehow  violently  rending 
her  Ufe  in  two,  —  a  presentiment  that  the  strong  impulse 
which  had  seemed  to  exclude  doubt  and  make  her  path 
clear  might  after  all  be  blindness,  and  that  there  was  some- 
thing in  human  bonds  which  must  prevent  them  from  being 
broken  with  the  breaking  of  illusions. 

Romola  went  home  and  sat  alone  through  the  sultry  hours 
of  that  day  with  the  heavy  certainty  that  her  lot  was  un- 
changed.    She   was   thrown    back    again    on    the    conflict 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy      191 

between  the  demands  of  an  outward  law  which  she  recog- 
nized as  a  widely  ramifying  obligation  and  the  demands 
of  inner  moral  facts  which  were  becoming  more  and  more 
peremptory.  She  had  drunk  in  deeply  the  spirit  of  that 
teaching  by  which  Savonarola  had  urged  her  to  return  to 
her  place.  She  felt  that  the  sanctity  attached  to  all  close 
relations,  and  therefore  pre-eminently  to  the  closest,  was 
but  the  expression  in  outward  law  of  that  result  towards 
which  all  human  goodness  and  nobleness  must  spontane- 
ously tend ;  that  the  light  abandonment  of  ties,  whether 
inherited  or  voluntary,  because  they  had  ceased  to  be 
pleasant,  was  the  uprooting  of  social  and  personal  virtue. 


She  enforces  her  views  by  putting  her  favorite 
Romola  into  the  wrong  in  fleeing  from  Tito,  notwith- 
standing her  great  provocations,  and  by  putting  the 
rebuke  on  the  lips  of  such  a  one  as  Savonarola. 
She  is  not  free,  he  tells  her,  for  she  is  a  debtor.  She 
owes  the  debt  of  a  wife  and  of  a  Florentine  woman. 
She  has  no  right  of  choice.  She  is  fleeing  from  the 
presence  of  God  into  the  wilderness.  How  will  she 
find  good?  "  It  is  not  a  thing  of  choice;  it  is  a  river 
that  flows  from  the  foot  of  the  Invisible  Throne,  and 
flows  by  the  path  of  obedience."  Man  cannot  choose 
his  duties.  Then  comes  that  superb  command  of 
Savonarola  to  draw  forth  the  crucifix  she  carries 
within  her  mantle.  "  There,  my  daughter,  is  the 
image  of  Supreme  Offering  made  by  Supreme  Love, 
because  the  need  of  man  was  great."  He  bids  her 
conform  her  life  to  that  image,  to  make  her  sorrow 
an  offering.  And  the  heading  of  the  first  chapter  in 
the  next  Book  is  "  Romola  in  her  Place." 

The  effect  of  the  Christian  teaching  of  Savonarola 
is  so  abiding  with  Romola  that  even  when  she  dis- 


192  George  Eliot 

covers  facts  which  would  undoubtedly  warrant,  in 
the  eyes  of  our  century,  absolute  divorce,  she 
determines  not  to  attempt  a  second  time  a  clandestine 
escape,  but  to  come  to  an  agreement  with  Tito  con- 
cerning a  limited  separation.  And  yet  she  feels 
that,  though  the  law  is  sacred,  "  rebellion  might  be 
sacred,  too ; "  and  she  sees,  in  a  flash,  that  her 
problem  is  essentially  the  same  as  Savonarola's,  "  the 
problem  where  the  sacredness  of  obedience  ended, 
and  where  the  sacredness  of  rebellion  began."  So, 
when  such  an  agreement  with  Tito  as  she  had  con- 
templated is  found  impossible,  after  her  godfather's 
death,  after  the  shock  of  the  failure  of  her  faith  in 
Savonarola,  when  the  burdens  become  unbearable, 
she  flees  again ;  and  this  time  there  is  no  arresting 
voice,  and  no  blame  on  the  part  of  any  reader. 

She  questioned  the  justness  of  her  own  conclusions,  of 
her  own  deeds :  she  had  been  rash,  arrogant,  always  dis- 
satisfied that  others  were  not  good  enough,  while  she  her- 
self had  not  been  true  to  what  her  soul  had  once  recog- 
nized as  the  best.  She  began  to  condemn  her  flight : 
after  all,  it  had  been  cowardly  self-care ;  the  grounds  on 
which  Savonarola  had  once  taken  her  back  were  truer, 
deeper  than  the  grounds  she  had  had  for  her  second  flight. 
How  could  she  feel  the  needs  of  others  and  not  feel  above 
all  the  needs  of  the  nearest  ? 

But  then  came  reaction  against  self-reproach.  The 
memory  of  her  life  with  Tito,  of  the  conditions  which  made 
their  real  union  impossible,  while  their  external  union  im- 
posed a  set  of  false  duties  on  her  which  were  essentially 
the  concealment  and  sanctioning  of  what  her  mind  revolted 
from,  told  her  that  flight  had  been  her  only  resource.  All 
minds,  except  such  as  are  delivered  from  doubt  by  dulness 
of  sensibility,  must  be   subject  to   this  recurring  conflict 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy      193 

where  the  many- twisted  conditions  of  life  have  forbidden 
the  fulfilment  of  a  bond.  For  in  strictness  there  is  no  re- 
placing of  relations :  the  presence  of  the  new  does  not 
nullify  the  failure  and  breach  of  the  old.  Life  has  lost  its 
perfection  :  it  has  been  maimed  ;  and  until  the  wounds  are 
quite  scarred,  conscience  continually  casts  backward  doubt- 
ing glances. 

We  all  know  how  the  struggle  ended. 

The  only  "  separations "  in  her  novels  are  the 
separations  of  spirits  made  bitter,  but  through  their 
bitterness  sublime,  by  the  galling  chains  which  fasten 
in  marital  faithfulness.  Who  ever  than  Lydgate, 
than  Dorothea,  better  fulfilled  the  awful  words  of  the 
service  which  bound  them  "  for  better,  for  worse  "  ? 
I  do  not  know  of  any  finer  picture  of  a  wife  than  the 
picture  of  Mrs.  Bulstrode  as  she  stands  over  the 
poor,  beaten,  irretrievably  disgraced  husband,  and 
though  ruined  in  his  ruin,  falling  with  his  fall,  her 
intense  pride  quenched  in  the  quenched  light  of  his, 
says  to  that  broken  idol,  "  Nicholas,  look  up  !  " 

If  we  could  only  view  it  objectively,  and  apart 
from  necessarily  binding  standards,  we  should  have 
to  acknowledge  her  union  with  Lewes  as  a  true 
"  inward  "  marriage.  No  two  persons  were  ever  more 
happily  mated.  While  his  critical  suggestions  may 
have  occasionally  interfered  with  the  freest  scope  of 
her  art,  his  acute  cleverness  yielded  unquestioned 
acquiescence  to  all  that  was  essential  in  her  genius. 
It  was,  thus  viewed,  an  ideal  union,  his  mental 
sprightliness  keying  her  to  effort,  and  her  moral 
earnestness  stirring  hitherto  unawakened  depths  in 
him.  He  was  her  willing  slave  in  every  good  sense. 
Each  of  her  books  acknowledged  the  indebtedness : 

»3 


1 94  George  Eliot 

each   is  dedicated,  in  terms  of  constant  affection,  to 
her  "husband." 

Her  marriage  to  Mr.  Cross  did  not  indicate  a 
change  of  view  in  regard  to  the  importance  of  legality 
and  regularity  in  the  marriage  bond,  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  she  emphasizes  with  power  in  her  writ- 
ings, but  merely  that  the  union  with  Lewes  would 
have  been  blessed  by  Church  and  State  if  she  could 
have  had  it  so.  That  it  was  not  so  blessed,  she 
seems  to  say,  was  because  of  the  cruel  neglect  of 
legislation,  for  which,  in  a  more  perfectly  regulated 
State,  room  would  be  found,  and  to  which  neglect  her 
"  outward  "  conscience  rose  superior.  It  is  the  most 
positive  proof  in  her  career  of  the  fallibility  of  any 
"  outward "  conscience  which  has  not  the  universal 
sweep  of  exceptionless  divine  command,  in  the 
absence  of  which  all  other  standards,  however  seem- 
ingly just,  must  clash.  The  result  of  her  example 
demonstrates  with  convincing  clearness  the  grand 
overtopping  excellence  of  God-given  over  man- 
derived  laws  of  conduct.  The  "  outward  "  conscience 
does  not,  and  never  will,  conform  to  any  one  rule  in 
any  two  men  unless  it  conform  to  one  standard  above 
them  both,  and  beyond  their  human  touch.  It  is  not 
as  if  the  divine  law  were  a  fetish,  as  if  it  were  apart 
from  all  human  understanding,  to  be  followed  blindly 
and  sullenly  by  a  frightened,  awe-struck  people ;  it  is 
precisely  the  law,  the  only  law,  which  the  "  outward  " 
conscience  represents.  It  ought  not  to  be  surprising 
that  George  Eliot  failed  to  grasp  that  vital  fact  at  the 
solemnest  moment  of  her  life,  because  the  fact  had 
passed,  with  the  rest  of  her  Christian  belief,  into  the 
limbo  of  discarded  faith.  With  her,  it  was  not 
rebellion   against   God's   law,  because   she   did   not 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       195 

believe  that  the  law  was  God's  in  that  it  did  not  con- 
form, in  this  given  case,  to  the  essential  moral  idea 
of  God.  She  can  only  reason  it  out.  The  Christian's 
act  of  faith  transcends  reason.  Not  that  the  Christian 
is  unsupported  by  reason,  but  the  faith  remains  with 
those  who  lack  the  reason,  and  is  supported  by  that 
which  is  above  it. 

That  is  all,  I  believe,  that  can  be  said  for  her,  and 
it  is  a  good  deal,  because  it  is  all  that  can  be  said  for 
one  who  was  guided  by  no  low  motives,  and  who 
could  honestly  justify  her  course  to  her  conscience. 
Perhaps  in  the  last  analysis,  one  must  qualify  that 
word  "  honestly;"  for  she  loved  much,  and  love  is  a 
casuist.  It  is  easier  to  formulate  philosophy  for 
others  than  to  abide  by  it  ourselves ;  her  Romola  is 
truer  than  herself.  But  no  genuine,  generous  student 
of  her  life  ever  for  the  smallest  fraction  of  a  second 
doubted  her  purity.  It  is  hard  for  some  to  under- 
stand that  because  there  is  illegality  there  is  not 
perforce  an  amour.  Only  once  or  twice  did  she 
break  her  silence  in  regard  to  this  union,  her  letter 
to  Mrs.  Bray,  soon  after  its  formation,  being  intended 
as  a  sufficiently  full  explanation : 

If  there  is  any  one  action  or  relation  of  my  life  which  is, 
and  always  has  been  profoundly  serious,  it  is  my  relation  to 
Mr.  I.ewes.  .  .  .  Light  and  easily  broken  ties  are  what 
I  neither  desire  theoretically  nor  could  live  for  practi- 
cally. Women  who  are  satisfied  with  such  ties  do  not 
act  as  I  have  done.  .  .  .  From  the  majority  of  persons, 
of  course,  we  never  looked  for  anything  but  condemnation. 
We  are  leading  no  life  of  self-indulgence,  except,  indeed, 
that,  being  happy  in  each  other,  we  find  everything  easy. 
We  are  working  hard  to  provide  for  others  better  than  we 


196  George  Eliot 

provide  for  ourselves,  and  to  fulfil  every  responsibility  that 
lies  upon  us.  Levity  and  pride  would  not  be  a  sufficient 
basis  for  that."  ^ 

And  it  speaks  volumes  for  the  recognition  of  her 
moral  weight  in  the  most  thoughtful  society  of  her 
country  that  its  leaders  —  women  as  well  as  men  — 
agreed  to  overlook  the  irregularity  of  the  connection. 
It  was  not  because  of  her  genius,  —  at  least,  not 
because  of  that  alone,  for  it  is  not  presumable  that 
the  Rector  of  Lincoln  and  his  wife,  Mr.  Goschen, 
Jowett  of  Balliol,  the  Hollands,  would  have  received 
George  Sand  into  their  homes. 

We  cannot  justify  her  course,  because  we  are 
Christians;  we  must  account  for  it,  for  the  same 
reason. 

XIV 

We  have  seen  how  she  tries  to  understand  the 
spirit  of  Dino's  monasticism,  but  her  sympathies  are 
enraged  at  his  abandonment  of  Bardo.  That  fine  old 
pagan  complains  that  his  son's  ideas  elude  argument. 
There  is,  indeed,  something  evasive  in  even  the 
weakest  forms  of  religion,  before  which  even  the 
strongest  moral  philosophy  is  helpless.  And  even  a 
philosophy  that  implicitly  denies  a  Christian  immor- 
tality, "  in  moments  high,"  when  "  space  widens  in 
the  soul,"  will  stand  mute  and  wondering  before  the 
reaches  of  the  soul  into  the  life  beyond.  Although 
Dorothea  had  ceased  to  pray,  she  cries  out  to  her 
dead  husband,  "  Do  you  not  see  710W  that  I  could 
not  submit  my  soul  to  yours?  " 

^  •  Life,'  vol.  i.,  p.  327  seq.  See  her  remarks  on  the  Byron  incident, 
'  Life,'  vol.  iii.,  p.  100. 


Her  Religion  and  Philosophy       197 

To  sum  up:  was  she  a  Christian?  No,  because 
she  had  lost  faith  in  a  personal  Christ.  Was  she  a 
theist?  No,  because,  she  had  lost  faith  in  a  personal 
God.  That  is,  No,  to  both  these  questions,  as  a  phil- 
osopher; but  —  and  this  only  concerns  us  —  as  a 
writer  of  fiction.  Yes,  for  is  she  not  the  immortal 
creator  of  Mr.  Tryan,  whose  memorial  is  his  fervent 
faith?  and  of  Savonarola,  whose  doctrine  of  submis- 
sion is  the  doctrine  of  all  the  blessed  saints?  and  of 
Dinah,  whose  life  is  a  sacrament?  Was  there  a  con- 
tradiction, therefore,  between  her  private  philosophy 
and  her  public  work?  Yes,  because  in  the  latter  she 
was,  like  all  creators,  divinely  possessed ;  whereas 
philosophy  is  not  creation,  but  reason;  is  not  hot, 
but  cold ;  is  not  mystic,  but  positive,  even  though 
Positivism  be  negative ;  has  naught  to  do  with  the 
feelings,  except  as  they  are  controlled  by  the  intellect; 
is  not,  to  conclude,  sympathetic.^  Does  her  philo- 
sophical negation  make  her  writings  irreligious?  No, 
because  she  does  not  allow  her  personal  views  to 
influence  her  art ;  because  she  is  all  the  more  intensely 
religious  by  reason  of  her  lack  of  religion ;  because 
she  finds  more  religion  in  life  than  many  find  life  in 
religion  ;  because  every  positive  word  she  has  uttered 
is  for  Virtue  and  against  Vice,  is  a  shield  for  Truth,  and 
against  Deceit.  Was  she  an  optimist?  No,  she  was 
too  intellectually  honest.     Was  she  a  pessimist .-'     No, 

^  "  My  function  is  that  of  the  (Esthetic,  not  the  doctrinal  teacher  — 
the  rousing  of  the  nobler  emotions,  which  make  mankind  desire  the 
social  right,  not  the  prescribing  of  special  measures,  concerning 
which  the  artistic  mind,  however  strongly  moved  by  social  sympathy, 
is  often  not  the  best  judge.  It  is  one  thing  to  feel  keenly  for  one's 
fellow-beings ;  another  to  say,  '  This  step,  and  this  alone,  will  be  the 
best  to  take  for  the  removal  of  particular  calamities.' "  —  Letter  to 
Mrs.  Peter  Taylor,  '  Life  '  vol.  iii.,  p.  300. 


198  George  Eliot 

she  was  too  careful  of  others.  What  was  she?  She 
was  a  "  meliorist,"  pierced  by  "  that  thorn-pressure 
which  must  come  with  the  crowning  of  the  Sorrowful 
Better  because  of  the  Worse."  She  was  a  moralist 
of  the  finest  fibre.  Her  books  are  standards  set  on 
high  for  all  men  to  follow  in  righteousness  and  true 
holiness.  And  although  she  occasionally  writes  from 
"  Grief  Castle  on  the  River  of  Gloom,  in  the  Valley 
of  Dolour,"  she  has  a  strong  message  of  peace,  of 
comfort,  and  of  courage. 


B.  — HER  ART 


In  the  sphere  of  art,  Wordsworth  and  Dante  influ- 
enced her  the  most  closely. 

We  have  so  completely  entered  into  Wordsworth's 
labors  that  his  works  do  follow  him  as  a  matter  of 
course  in  our  undisputed  basic  conceptions  of  art; 
and  it  is  only  by  an  effort  of  the  historic  imagination 
that  we  can  understand  the  revolutionary  controversy 
their  promulgation  caused  in  the  first  year  of  the  past 
century.  All  that  he  contended  for  was  naturalness, 
and  all  that  he  contended  against  was  its  opposite. 
And  where  could  naturalness  have  freer  play  than 
among  people  living  in  simple  surroundings? 

If  we  agree  with  Wordsworth  that  humble  incidents 
may  be  dignified  in  poetry  by  the  imagination,  and 
that  their  true  dignity,  in  poetic  diction,  is  not  only 
not  fitly  expressed,  but  thoroughly  spoiled  by  artifi- 
cially ornamental  language,  it  follows  that  the  thesis 
applies  with  more  than  equal  force  to  prose.  Words- 
worth's argument  was  in  defence  of  a  theory  of  poetry ; 
but  as  it  was  based  on  a  theoretically  accepted  stand- 
ard of  prose,  its  acceptance  had  the  joyous  result 
of  improving  the  style  of  prose  as  well.  The  most 
exciting  novels  of  incident,  to-day,  which  are  at  the 
same  time  works  of  art,  are,  notwithstanding  the 
spur  they  apply  to  the  craving  for  the  extraordinary, 
not  therefore  "  gross  and  violent  stimulants  "  such  as 


200  George  Eliot 

the  "  degrading  thirst  after  outrageous  stimulation  " 
which,  Wordsworth  rightly  charged,  the  taste  of  his 
day  produced,  one  hundred  years  ago,  in  "  frantic 
novels,  sickly  and  stupid  German  tragedies,  and  del- 
uges of  idle  and  extravagant  stories  in  verse." 

Like  Wordsworth,  George  Eliot  strove  to  reproduce 
the  emotional  motive  kindling  her  imagination,  as 
opposed  to  the  more  vulgar  method  of  arbitrarily 
choosing  a  theme,  and  working  at  it  like  a  cobbler 
over  a  pair  of  shoes.  Even  in  her  "  Evangelical  "  days 
she  expresses  her  delight  at  meeting  in  Wordsworth 
so  much  of  her  own  feeling ;  and  this  response  she 
continued  to  enjoy  throughout  her  life. 

The  indebtedness  to  Dante  is  equally  great,  and  for 
somewhat  similar  reasons.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  pecu- 
liar similarity  between  the  Florentine  and  the  English 
laureate  in  their  veracious  representations  and  their 
discriminating  perceptions.  Her  study  of  the  Italian 
poet  was  profound.  In  the  powerful  paper  in  '  Theo- 
phrastus '  directed  against  the  false  testimonials  men 
give  themselves  for  what  is  mistaken  as  a  high  imagina- 
tion, and  what  is,  in  reality,  "  a  ready  activity  in  fabri- 
cating extravagances  such  as  are  presented  by  fevered 
dreams,"  she  calls  Dante  to  witness  that  this  supposed 
imaginativeness  is  nothing  but  confusion  resulting  from 
a  defective  perception.  "These  characteristics  are 
the  very  opposite  of  such  as  yield  a  fine  imagination, 
which  is  always  based  on  a  keen  vision,  a  keen  con- 
sciousness of  what  is,  and  carries  the  store  of  definite 
knowledge  as  material  for  the  construction  of  its  in- 
ward visions.  Witness  Dante,  who  is  at  once  the 
most  precise  and  homely  in  his  reproduction  of  actual 
objects,  and  the  most  soaringly  at  large  in  his  imagina- 
tive combinations."    And  witness  herself  also. 


Her  Art  201 

Deronda,  setting  out  to  find  Mirah's  relatives,  is,  for 
a  while,  sickened  by  the  coarse  surroundings  of  his 
field: 


He  went  often  rambling  in  those  parts  of  London  which 
are  most  inhabited  by  common  Jews :  he  walked  to  the 
synagogues  at  times  of  service,  he  looked  into  shops,  he  ob- 
served faces,  —  a  process  not  very  promising  of  particular 
discovery.  Why  did  he  not  address  himself  to  an  influential 
Rabbi  or  other  member  of  a  Jewish  community,  to  consult 
on  the  chances  of  finding  a  mother  named  Cohen,  with  a 
son  named  Ezra,  and  a  lost  daughter  named  Mirah?  He 
thought  of  doing  so  —  after  Christmas.  The  fact  was,  not- 
withstanding all  his  sense  of  poetry  in  common  things, 
Deronda,  where  a  keen  personal  interest  was  aroused,  could 
not,  more  than  the  rest  of  us,  continuously  escape  suffering 
from  the  pressure  of  that  hard,  unaccommodating  Actual, 
which  has  never  consulted  our  taste  and  is  entirely  unselect. 
Enthusiasm,  we  know,  dwells  at  ease  among  ideas,  tolerates 
garlic  breathed  in  the  middle  ages,  and  sees  no  shabbiness 
in  the  official  trappings  of  classic  processions;  it  gets 
squeamish  when  ideals  press  upon  it  as  something  warmly 
incarnate,  and  can  hardly  face  them  without  fainting.  Lying 
dreamily  in  a  boat,  imagining  oneself  in  quest  of  a  beautiful 
maiden's  relatives  in  Cordova  elbowed  by  Jews  in  the  time 
of  Ibn-Gebirol,  all  the  physical  incidents  can  be  borne  with- 
out shock.  Or  if  the  scenery  of  St.  Mary  Axe  and  White- 
chapel  were  imaginatively  transported  to  the  borders  of  the 
Rhine  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century,  when  in  the  ears 
Hstening  for  the  signals  of  the  Messiah,  the  Hep !  Hep  ! 
Hep  !  of  the  Crusaders  came  like  the  bay  of  bloodhounds  ; 
and  in  the  presence  of  those  devilish  missionanes  with  sword 
and  firebrand  the  crouching  figure  of  the  reviled  Jew  turned 
round  erect,  heroic,  flashing  with  subhme  constancy  in  the 
face  of  torture  and  death  —  what  would  the  dingy  shops 


202  George  Eliot 

and  unbeautiful  faces  signify  to  the  thrill  of  contemplative 
emotion  ?  But  the  fervor  of  sympathy  with  which  we  con- 
template a  grandiose  martyrdom  is  feeble  compared  with 
the  enthusiasm  that  keeps  unslacked  where  there  is  no  dan- 
ger, no  challenge  —  nothing  but  impartial  midday  falling 
on  commonplace,  perhaps  half- repulsive,  objects  which  are 
really  the  beloved  ideas  made  flesh.  Here  undoubtedly  lies 
the  chief  poetic  energy,  —  in  the  force  of  imagination  that 
pierces  or  exalts  the  solid  fact,  instead  of  floating  among 
cloud-pictures.  To  glory  in  a  poetic  vision  of  knowledge 
covering  the  whole  earth,  is  an  easier  exercise  of  believing 
imagination  than  to  see  its  beginning  in  newspaper  placards, 
staring  at  you  from  a  bridge  beyond  the  corn-fields ;  and  it 
might  well  happen  to  most  of  us  dainty  people  that  we  were 
in  the  thick  of  the  battle  of  Armageddon  without  being  aware 
of  anything  more  than  the  annoyance  of  a  little  explosive 
smoke  and  struggling  on  the  ground  immediately  about  us. 

"  Falsehood  is  so  easy,  truth  so  difficult,"  she  says. 
She  will  draw  no  griffins  with  exaggerated  claws  and 
wings,  but,  if  possible,  a  real  unexaggerated  lion. 
This  is  what  she  finds  to  admire  "  in  many  Dutch 
paintings  which  lofty-minded  people  despise,"  —  this 
"  precious  quality  of  truthfulness."  They  are  "  faith- 
ful pictures  of  a  monotonous  homely  existence,"  and 
therefore  nearer  the  life  of  the  majority  than  a  life  of 
exciting  activity. 

Paint  us  an  angel,  if  you  can,  with  a  floating  velvet  robe, 
and  a  face  paled  by  the  celestial  hght ;  paint  us  yet  oftener 
a  Madonna,  turning  her  mild  face  upward,  and  opening  her 
arms  to  welcome  the  divine  glory ;  but  do  not  impose  upon 
us  any  aesthetic  rules  which  shall  banish  from  the  region  of 
Art  those  old  women  scraping  carrots  with  their  work-worn 
hands,  those  heavy  clowns  taking  holiday  in  a  dingy  pot- 


Her  Art  203 

house,  those  rounded  backs  and  stupid,  weather-beaten 
faces  that  have  bent  over  the  spade  and  done  the  rough 
work  of  the  world,  those  homes  with  their  tin  pans,  their 
brown  pitchers,  their  rough  curs,  and  their  clusters  of  onions. 

And  at  the  very  time  she  was  writing  these  words  in 
'  Adam  Bede,'  Millet,  unknown  to  her,  was  starving  in 
Barbizon  !  It  was  as  if  he  had  heard  her  voice  across 
the  sea  and  strove  to  do  her  bidding. 

She  carries  out  in  her  novels  the  principles  she 
advocates  in  her  essay  on  Riehl.  She  gives  us  pic- 
tures of  true  peasantry,  as  she  claims,  English  painters 
do  not,  —  such  pictures  as  those  of  Teniers  and  Murillo. 
If  our  sympathies  are  to  be  expanded  they  must  be 
based  on  realities,  as  when  Wordsworth  sings  the 
reverie  of  *  Poor  Susan.'  Falsification  in  art  dealing 
with  the  life  of  the  people  is  pernicious  because  it 
turns  the  attention  away  from  a  serious  regard  of  their 
real  joys  and  sorrows.  What  is  wanted  is  a  natural 
history  of  our  social  classes ;  and  neither  the  doctrin- 
aire nor  the  dreamer  can  write  it.^ 

The  allusion  in  this  essay  to  Dickens  is  most  im- 
portant : 

We  have  one  great  novelist  who  is  gifted  with  the  utmost 
power  of  rendering  the  external  traits  of  our  town  popu- 
lation ;  and  if  he  could  give  us  their  psychological  character 
—  their  conceptions  of  life,  and  their  emotions  —  with  the 
same  truth  as  their  idiom  and  manners,  his  books  would  be 

^  The  raw  material  of  some  of  her  after  fiction  may  be  found  here. 
For  example,  she  notes,  in  passing,  Riehl's  reference  to  the  German 
peasants'  inveterate  habit  of  litigation,  which  has  its  parallel  in  Eng- 
land ;  and  which  may  have  suggested  Mr.  Tulliver's  lawsuit,  although 
Mr.  Tulliver  would  doubtless  resent  being  classed  with  Dandie 
Dinmont  I 


204  George  Eliot 

the  greatest  contribution  Art  has  ever  made  to  the  awaken- 
ing of  social  sympathies.  But  while  he  can  copy  Mrs. 
Plornish's  colloquial  style  with  the  delicate  accuracy  of  a 
sun-picture,  while  there  is  the  same  startling  inspiration  in 
his  description  of  the  gestures  and  phrases  of  "  Boots  "  as  in 
the  speeches  of  Shakspere's  mobs  or  numskulls,  he  scarcely 
ever  passes  from  the  humorous  and  external  to  the  emotional 
and  tragic,  without  becoming  as  transcendent  in  his  unreal- 
ity as  he  was  a  moment  before  in  his  artistic  truthfulness. 
But  for  the  precious  salt  of  his  humor,  which  compels  him  to 
reproduce  external  traits  that  serve,  in  some  degree,  as  a 
corrective  to  his  frequently  false  psychology,  his  preter- 
naturally  virtuous  poor  children  and  artisans,  his  melodra- 
matic boatmen  and  courtesans,  would  be  as  noxious  as 
Eugene  Sue's  idealized  proletaires  in  encouraging  the  miser- 
able fallacy  that  high  morality  and  refined  sentiment  can 
grow  out  of  harsh  social  relations,  ignorance,  and  want ;  or 
that  the  working-classes  are  in  a  condition  to  enter  at  once 
into  a  millennial  state  of  altruism,  wherein  every  one  is  car- 
ing for  every  one  else,  and  no  one  for  himself.  ^ 

Everything  false  in  Dickens  is  the  opposite  of  some- 
thing true  in  George  Eliot.  The  great  humorist 
would  have  made  much  of  the  picture  of  Warner 
weaving  on  and  on  in  his  cabin,  — would  have  made 
it  a  companion  picture  to  his  Madame  Defarge, 
always  knitting  and  seeing  nothing.     George  Eliot, 

^  See  also  her  review  of  *  Hard  Times '  in  the  Belles-Lettres  column 
of  the  Westminster,  Oct.,  1854,  p.  604,  in  which  remonstrance  is  recorded 
that  the  author  neglected  a  rare  opportunity  to  portray  the  inner  life 
of  the  great  labor  movement  in  the  north  of  England  for  the  compara- 
tively unimportant  exhibition  of  the  evil  effects  of  an  education  which 
subordinates  the  finer  feelings  to  the  intellect,  —  a  system  of  education 
which  existed  only  in  Dickens's  imagination.  In  this  she  unconsciously 
prognosticates  her  own  great  fame  in  '  Felix  Holt.' 


Her  Art  205 

whom  I  shall  presently  try  to  prove  a  finer  humorist 
than  Dickens,  was  too  much  occupied  with  the  psy- 
chical Warner  to  linger  on  the  pictorial. 

II 

No  art  can  meet  with  a  satisfying  recognition  that 
is  not  true  to  known  conditions,  —  not,  of  necessity, 
experimentally  known,  but  appealing  to  a  universal 
intuitive  apprehension.  The  best  art  is,  therefore, 
that  which  meets  the  most  readily  with  this  recog- 
nition. It  must  be  true  to  nature,  as  we  say,  and 
hold  in  check  the  tendency  of  the  subjective  bias  to 
"improve,"  on  an  imperfect  nature,  —  so  imperfect 
that  the  compelling  force  of  the  art  would  seem  to 
be  the  removal  of  the  imperfections.  The  best  art  is 
the  best  imitation  of  an  instinctively  known  nature ; 
and  the  subtlest  appreciation  of  its  display,  in  such  a 
picture,  for  example,  as  the  horror  of  Macbeth  in  the 
banquet  scene,  is  shown,  not  by  our  exclamation, 
"  How  sublime !  "  but  by  our  exclamation,  "  How 
natural ! " 

The  judgments  even  of  professional  critics  have  been 
too  often  of  the  snap  variety  to  pause  at  the  word 
"  unnatural,"  which  has  thus  been  rashly  written  down 
where  the  word  "  unusual  "  should  have  stood.  If  we 
can  rightly  say,  "  How  unnatural !  "  upon  a  work,  that 
work,  in  the  rightness  of  that  criticism,  is  not  a  work 
of  art,  and  cannot  live.  One  would  be  the  happy,  or 
perhaps  unhappy,  possessor  of  an  almost  superhuman 
vision  into  the  inter-relationship  of  cause  and  effect 
who  could  settle  whether  truth  to  nature  is  the  result 
of  a  well-directed  devotion  to  a  moral  purpose,  or  the 
power  which  moves  the  intelligence  into  framing  the 


2o6  George  Eliot 

moral  concept  into  accord  with  a  universal  conscious- 
ness of  right.  The  trueness  of  George  Eliot's  art  will 
stand  either  test;  and  its  convincing  qualities  are 
dubious  only  when  the  concept  is  emphasized  with 
an  enthusiasm  which  excludes  a  due  consideration  of 
the  surrounding  circumstances,  which  are  thus  felt 
not  to  be  given  their  fairest  play.  Just  as  Words- 
worth failed  to  convince  chiefly  in  the  poems  where 
he  pushed  his  concept  beyond  the  point  of  uni- 
versal intuitive  recognition,  so  George  Eliot  failed 
only  where  some  great  doctrine  absorbed  her  atten- 
tion with  a  too  cruel  insistence,  as  in  her  treatment 
of  heredity  in  '  The  Spanish  Gypsy.' 

Even  on  such  dangerous  ground  her  general  truth- 
fulness saves  her  from  some  of  the  errors  she  has 
been  charged  with.  The  Hebrew  note  in  '  Daniel 
Deronda'  has  raised  a  chorus  of  dissent;  and  it  is  a 
little  as  if  she  had  planned  to  arrange  her  scale  with- 
out the  use  of  accidentals.  But  let  the  unwary  critic 
who  standeth  where  George  Eliot  has  slipped  beware 
lest  he  fall  where  George  Eliot  stands  firm.  The 
scene  between  Deronda  and  his  mother  has  been 
used  as  a  part  of  the  argument  against  the  whole 
"  unnatural "  Jewish  scheme ;  yet  in  '  The  Life  and 
Writings  of  Isaac  Disraeli '  may  be  found  a  situation 
so  nearly  identical  that  one  of  two  things  is  certain : 
either  George  Eliot  used  that  situation  representa- 
tively, or  the  creation  of  the  situation  in  her  book  is 
an  evidence  of  marvellous  intuition  into  the  possibili- 
ties of  racial  feeling. 

Except  under  this  occasional  dominance  of  a 
theory,  she  had  that  nice  perception  of  fitness  without 
which  mere  power  remains  ineffectual.  If  Romola 
seems  to  you  cold,  the  impression  is  a  correct  re- 


Her  Art  207 

flection  of  a  finely  true  conception.  She  is  made 
cold  with  a  purpose ;  nay,  the  author  finds  her  cold, 
just  as  the  miner  finds  his  gold  yellow.  She  is  the 
embodiment  of  what  is  noblest  in  the  Florentine 
spirit.  Florence  is  a  serious  city  —  the  city  of  Dante 
and  Savonarola.  The  daughter  of  Bardo  was  brought 
up  in  the  sternest  austerity  of  the  Stoic  philosophy, 
and  she  fits  into  the  ingenia  acerrima  Florentina  which 
chilled  Tito's  warmly  sensuous  spirit : 

"  There  is  something  grim  and  grave  to  me  always  about 
Florence,"  said  Tito.  ..."  and  even  in  its  merriment  there 
is  something  shrill  and  hard  —  biting  rather  than  gay." 

Ill 

Are  there  any  really  successful  historical  novels, 
with  the  subjective  element  in  control?  Does  not 
the  subjectivity  control  the  history?  It  is  a  most 
intricate  question,  and  it  cannot  be  decided  out  of 
hand.  Certain  is  it  that  the  earnestness  of  one's 
study  of  a  past  era  may  not  prepare  one  for  its  exact 
representation,  and  that  the  most  conscientious  effort 
to  represent  its  spirit  is  apt  to  be  tinctured  with  a 
modern  spirit.  Under  a  dominant  idea,  this  possi- 
bility will  become  almost  a  certainty.  But  who  can 
free  one's  self,  when  the  working  stuff"  of  one's  thought 
is  the  disjecta  membra  of  moral  philosophies,  from 
injecting  into  a  past  what  belongs  to  the  present? 
And  who  shall  say  with  certainty  that  a  Florentine 
of  the  fifteenth  century  could  not  guide  his  life  with 
some  ethical  method  not  so  different,  after  all,  from 
that  of  a  later  time?  The  fear  of  the  Church,  the 
dread  of  hell,  the  awards  of  heaven,  are  not  enough 
to  explain  the  Savonarola  of  history;  and   George 


2o8  George  Eliot 

Eliot's  explanation  is  at  least  not  proven  to  be  anti- 
historical.  It  knits  us  to  a  past  when  we  are  made  to 
feel  that  the  same  grand  purposes  which  rule  us  ruled 
it;  and  a  conception  is  not  damnable  because  it  is  a 
nineteenth-century  exposition  of  a  fifteenth-century 
fact,  so  long  as  the  real  exposition  is  hidden  in  the 
fall  of  years,  and  can  be  approximated  only  by  a 
sympathetic  imagination,  which  must  be  guided  in 
some  degree  by  the  facts  of  the  present. 

'  Romola  '  may  be  *  Middlemarch  '  in  ancient  Flor- 
entine garb,  but  only  in  the  nearness  of  a  great 
moral  idea  which  may  have  its  forerunners  in  a 
previous  age,  though  the  manner  of  approach  be 
different.  At  least  two  things  which  are  apparent  in 
all  George  Eliot's  work  are  especially  notable  in  this : 
a  thorough  preparation  for  her  task,  and  a  minute 
carefulness  of  detail  in  working  it  out.  She  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  '  Romola '  when  in  Florence  in 
i860;  and  following  the  advice  of  the  French  bishop 
to  his  clergy  to  let  a  text  rot  in  the  mind  before 
preaching  from  it,  she  let  her  imagination  play  on 
the  concept  for  more  than  a  year  before  putting  pen 
to  paper.  The  list  of  the  books  she  read  covers  the 
complete  bibliography  of  the  period,  and  she  read 
them  in  the  original,  —  not  only  such  writers  as 
Villari  and  Sismondi,  but  Dante  and  Savonarola, 
Boccaccio  and  Politian.  She  made  a  study  of  the 
topography  of  Florence,  and  examined  the  costumes 
of  the  period  in  the  British  Museum.  She  put  her- 
self in  the  way  of  acquiring  the  learned  slang  of  a 
Renaissance  city  and  the  alley-talk  of  its  mobs  by 
reading  'La  Mandragola'  (twice)  and  'La  Calandra,' 
—  she  whom  her  critics  (how  many  of  them,  by  the 
way,  could  read  the  originals  whence  she  drew  her 


Her  Art  209 

colors?)  charged  with  a  lack  of  contemporaneousness. 
She  said  that  she  began  '  Romola'  a  young,  and  fin- 
ished it  an  old,  woman,  so  terribly  did  it  plough  into 
her  brain.^  And  whether  anachronistic  in  motive  or 
not,  it  contains  none  of  the  usual  anachronisms  which 
mar  the  historical  novels  which  are  the  mere  result 
of  cramming.  She  reflects  the  actual  forms  of  speech. 
The  Italian  characters  always  address  Politian  by  his 
Italian  name,  although  when  she  speaks  it  is  *  Poli- 
tian.' She  refers  to  Tito  lifting  his  cap  to  Romola  as 
an  unusual  sign  of  reverence  at  that  time.  A  less 
careful  writer,  in  describing  the  atrium  of  the  Piazza 
deir  Annunziata  might  —  and  probably  would  — 
have  fallen  into  the  error  of  including  the  surround- 
ing cloisters  and  the  frescoes  of  del  Sarto  in  the 
description,  which  George  Eliot  knows  were  not  then 
existing.  These  are  little  things,  but  it  is  the  pain- 
fully gathered  mickle  of  detail  that  makes  the  muckle 
of  a  noble  result.  Right  was  thy  judgment,  O 
Strauss  !  —  "  et  accurata  et  perspicua  " :  "  accuracy, 
the  very  soul  of  scholarship."  ^ 

1  'Life,'  vol.  ii.,  p.  352.  See  also  Trollope's  '  What  I  Remember,' 
chapter  xxxv. 

^  To  paint  with  authority  such  a  character  as  Lydgate,  she  read, 
among  other  books,  Renouard's  *  History  of  Medicine,'  CuUen's 
'  Life,'  Gall's  '  Anatomy,'  Carpenter's  '  Comparative  Physiology,* 
*  Heroes  of  Medicine ; '  diversifying  these  studies  with  Nisard's  *  His- 
tory of  French  Literature,'  Drayton's  '  Nymphidia,'  Grote,  Aris- 
tophanes, Theocritus,  Owen,  Plato,  and  '  Macbeth.'  Before  writing 
'  Felix  Holt '  she  read  Bamford's  '  Passages  from  the  Life  of  a  Radi- 
cal,' Mill,  Comte,  Blackstone,  English  histories  of  the  reign  of  George 
III.,  the  'Times'  for  1832-3,  and  the  Annual  Register  for  1832.  She 
read  the  Bible  to  get  the  proper  tone  for  Lyon's  talk,  and  consulted 
Mr.  Harrison  for  law  points.  Jacobs  says  she  must  have  read,  before 
writing  the  Jewish  chapters  in  '  Daniel  Deronda,'  Gratz's  '  Geschicte 
der  Judea,'  in  ten  volumes,  Jehuda  Halevi,  Spinoza,  '  The  Book  of 
Light'  (the  Cabalistic  Book)  Sohar,  and  Mairaonides-  Was  there 
ever  another  such  ? 

14 


21  o  George  Eliot 

I  do  not  know  that  angels  fear  to  tread  where  the 
Scotch  dialect  flourishes,  —  although  I  think  they 
might,  —  but  George  Eliot  refrains  from  rushing  into 
those  brambles.  She  describes  and  imitates  only 
what  she  is  wholly  familiar  with.  She  understands 
the  speech  of  North  Staffordshire  and  the  neighbor- 
ing parts  of  Derby,  and  she  does  not  hesitate  to  use 
it  in  '  Adam  Bede.'  But  she  is  not  so  sure  of  Scotch, 
and  is  filled  with  caution  as  she  approaches  it.  "  I 
think  it  was  Mr.  Craig's  pedigree  only  that  had  the 
advantage  of  being  Scotch,  and  not  his  bringing  up, 
for  except  that  he  had  a  stronger  burr  in  his  accent, 
his  speech  differed  little  from  that  of  the  Loamshire 
people  around  him."  It  is  well  sometimes  to  beat 
the  literary  devil  around  the  bush;  and  this  is  an 
instance  not  only  of  the  cautiousness  which  accom- 
panies the  scholarly  habit  of  accuracy,  but  also  of 
the  honesty  which  rejects  what  is  not  strictly  its 
own.  We  always  feel,  in  reading  George  Eliot,  that 
what  she  gives  us  is  the  genuine  coin  of  the  realm 
earned  by  hard  work ;  the  kind  of  confidence  we  feel 
in  a  doctor  who  has  taken  an  honest  degree.  Even 
one  who  might  dispute  her  theory  would  take  without 
question  her  facts ;  and  a  continued  reliance  upon 
the  truthfulness  of  her  perceptions  gradually  per- 
suades many  to  put  credence  in  her  moral  system 
also.  At  all  events,  one  is  convinced  that  she  has  as 
much  right,  and  the  same  kind  of  right,  to  talk  about 
philosophy  as  Captain  Marryat  has  to  talk  about  the 
sea.^ 

^  What  the  critic  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  said  of  '  Felix  Holt ' 
may  be  said  of  all  her  works  :  "  '  Felix  Holt '  has  some  of  the  defects  of 
ordinary  novels,  but  ordinary  novels  have  none  of  the  merits  of  '  Felix 
Holt.'" 


Her  Art  21 1 

Just  how  much  of  an  experimental  knowledge  is 
requisite  for  an  artistic  presentation  of  value  is  a  ques- 
tion I  will  leave  to  the  "  nice  geographers  "  whose 
objections  to  '  The  Tempest '  are  based  on  the  general 
proposition  that  it  is  n't  so.  An  intelligent  cabinet- 
maker said,  when  '  Adam  Bede  '  appeared,  that  no- 
body but  a  cabinet-maker  could  have  written  it.  It 
was  the  finest  possible  tribute  to  that  accuracy  of 
perception  for  which  our  author  stood,  but  it  was  a 
cabinet-maker's  criticism ;  and  to  apply  it  in  general 
would  be  to  rob  her  of  the  divining-rod  of  genius  — 
which  is  insight  —  and  to  place  in  her  hand  instead 
the  reporter's  detective  camera.  She  did  not  have  to 
frequent  taverns  to  know  what  went  on  at  the  Rain- 
bow, and  yet  the  Rainbow  scene  has  been  well  called 
Shaksperean. 

There  are  indeed  no  portraits  after  the  *  Clerical 
Scenes,'  only  hints  and  broken  bits  of  portraiture. 
The  persecution  of  Tryan  was  based  on  an  actual 
occurrence,  but  the  details  were  her  own.  The  even- 
ing at  Mordecai's  club  was  undoubtedly  suggested 
by  a  similar  experience  of  Mr.  Lewes,  but  there 
are  philosophical  alterations,  for  Lewes'  man  was 
a  disciple  of  Spinoza,  and  Mordecai  was  his  oppo- 
nent. She  said  in  regard  to  '  Adam  Bede,'  "  There 
is  not  a  single  portrait  in  the  book,  nor  will  there 
be  in  any  future  book  of  mine."  ^  Even  in  her 
dialect  she  aimed  at  giving  a  general  physiognomy 
rather  than  a  close  portraiture ;  and  one  might  wish 
that  the  Scotchmen  could  be  prevailed  upon  to 
adopt  the  same  liberal  terms  with  their  readers. 
To  be  general  without  generalizing ;  to  be  broad 

1  'Life,' vol.  ii.,  p.  117. 


212  George  Eliot 

and  generous,  yet  exact  and  true;  to  build  a  high 
tower  of  observation  on  a  firm  rock  of  knowledge, 
—  that  is  art,  and  that  is  George  Eliot. 


IV 

She  is  true,  too,  in  those  nuances  of  feeling  which 
mark  off  one  mode  of  life  from  another.  She  makes 
her  gardener  in  '  Mr.  Gilfil's  Love  Story '  find  in 
the  Gothic  architecture  something  intelligible  be- 
cause of  its  symbols  drawn  from  his  own  profession. 

"  Howiver,  I  '11  noot  denay  that  the  Goothic  stayle  *s 
prithy  anoof,  an*  it 's  woonderful  how  near  them  stoon-carvers 
cuts  cot  the  shapes  o'  the  pine-apples  an'  shamrucks  an' 
looses." 

When  Adam  Bede  in  his  old  age  recalls  the  memory 
of  Mr.  Irwine's  pastorship,  he  defends  his  lack  of 
spirituality  with  similes  drawn  from  his  old  trade 
of  carpentry: 

"  He  did  n't  go  into  deep  speritial  experience ;  and  I 
know  there 's  a  deal  in  a  man's  inward  life  as  you  can't 
measure  by  the  square,  and  say  do  this  and  that  '11  follow, 
and  do  that  and  this  '11  follow." 

He  is  asked  if  Mr.  Ryde  did  not  preach  more  about 
the  spiritual  part  of  religion  than  Mr.  Irwine. 

"  Eh  !  I  knowna.  He  preached  a  deal  about  doctrines. 
But  I  *ve  seen  pretty  clear  ever  since  I  was  a  young  un,  as 
religion  's  something  else  besides  doctrines  and  notions.  I 
look  at  it  as  if  the  doctrines  were  like  finding  names  for 
your  feelings  so  as  you  can  talk  of  'em  when  you  've  never 


Her  Art  2 1 3 

known  'em,  just  as  a  man  may  talk  o'  tools  when  he  knows 
the  names,  though  he  's  never  so  much  as  seen  'em,  still  less 
handled  'em." 

And  Mrs.  Peyser's  pleasure  in  seeing  this  same 
Mr.  Irwine  Sunday  after  Sunday  is  a  part  of  that 
large  general  pleasure  we  all  instinctively  feel  in  a 
harmonious  familiar  picture. 

"  It 's  summat-like  to  see  such  a  man  as  that  i'  the  desk 
of  a  Sunday  !  As  I  say  to  Poyser,  it 's  like  looking  at  a  full 
crop  o'  wheat  or  a  pasture  with  a  fine  dairy  o'  cows  in  it ;  it 
makes  you  think  the  world 's  comfortable  like." 

Mrs.  Peyser's  wit  is  not  only  rare,  it  is  the  native 
wit  of  a  Staffordshire  farmer's  wife;  and  its  rarity 
no  more  interferes  with  its  nativeness  than  the  su- 
perior quality  of  the  Hall  Farm  cheeses  interferes 
with  the  equally  natural  failures  of  the  Britton  es- 
tablishment near  by.  There  is  no  humor  in  Mrs. 
Poyser's  speech ;  it  is  all  wit.  Because  humor  calls 
for  reflective  and  deliberative  characteristics  absolutely 
uncharacteristic  of  Mrs.  Poyser  and  her  class. 

The  "  scorching  sense  of  disgrace  "  which  the  Hall 
Farm  felt  at  Hetty's  fall  is  more  severely  voiced  by 
Poyser  than  by  his  wife,  to  the  surprise  of  a  good 
many  besides  Mr.  Irwine.  People  who  relieve  a 
nervous  irritability  by  keen  speech  on  trivial  things 
are  apt  to  be  awed  by  the  shadow  of  vital  events,  and 
the  nervousness  works  off  in  a  sympathy  which  enlists 
against  all  that  affects  the  peace  of  the  sufferer.  Mrs. 
Poyser's  silence  is  similar  to  that  of  Aunt  Glegg, 
whose  sharp  tongue  might  be  looked  to  for  a  vig- 
orous wagging  against  Maggie,  instead  of  which  it 
becomes  Maggie's  defender. 


214  George  Eliot 

Caterina,  in  the  hands  of  some  latter-day  and  al- 
most all  former-day  novelists,  would  have  been 
forced  into  suicide  by  the  necessitous  art  of  melo- 
drama. But  George  Eliot's  art  knows  better.  Cate- 
rina never  thought  of  suicide.  Her  nature  was  too 
tender  and  too  timid  to  allow  her  anger  to  settle  into 
anything  more  active  than  mourning.  This  is  the 
art  "  close  to  nature  "  because  based  on  a  knowledge 
of  human  nature. 

Perhaps  the  finest  example  of  this  wonderful  cor- 
relation of  her  art  to  the  standards  of  nature  is  the 
scene  of  the  betrothal  between  Adam  and  Hetty. 
To  call  it  '  The  Betrothal,'  as  the  author  does  in  the 
heading  to  the  chapter,  is  a  part  of  the  art,  for  it  is  a 
part  of  the  evasive  mockery  of  the  human  concrete 
conditions,  which  interfere  with  the  realization  of  the 
divine  abstract  conditions,  which  we  would  like  to 
make  human. 

"  I  could  afford  to  be  married  now,  Hetty.  I  could 
make  a  wife  comfortable;  but  I  shall  never  want  to  be 
married  if  you  won't  have  me." 

Hetty  looked  up  at  him  and  smiled  through  her  tears, 
as  she  had  done  to  Arthur  that  first  evening  m  the  wood, 
when  she  thought  he  was  not  coming,  and  yet  he  came. 
It  was  a  feebler  relief,  a  feebler  triumph  she  felt  now,  but 
the  great  dark  eyes  and  the  sweet  lips  were  as  beautiful  as 
ever,  perhaps  more  beautiful,  for  there  was  a  more  luxuri- 
ant womanliness  about  Hetty  of  late.  Adam  could  hardly 
believe  in  the  happiness  of  that  moment.  His  right  hand 
held  her  left,  and  he  pressed  her  arm  close  against  his  heart 
as  he  leaned  down  towards  her. 

"  Do  you  really  love  me,  Hetty  ?  Will  you  be  my  own 
wife,  to  love  and  take  care  of  as  long  as  I  live  ?  " 


Her  Art  215 

Hetty  did  not  speak,  but  Adam's  face  was  very  close  to 
hers,  and  she  put  up  her  round  cheek  against  his,  like  a 
kitten.  She  wanted  to  be  caressed ;  she  wanted  to  feel  as 
if  Arthur  were  with  her  again. 

Hetty  was  not  false  to  Adam ;  she  was  simply  true 
to  herself.  She  was  true  to  her  nature,  and  Adam 
was  true  to  his;  and  it  was  the  truth  of  her  feeling 
that  was  the  deception  of  the  truth  of  his.  What 
more  can  art  do? 


One  infallible  sign  of  creative  art  is  that  it  enters 
with  enthusiasm  into  the  subtleties  of  its  creations. 
It  does  not  follow  that  because  there  is  enthusiasm 
there  is  genius.  It  may  be  that  in  the  composition 
of  '  Aurelian  '  and  '  Serapis  '  their  authors  felt  a  glow 
they  thought  divine,  but  which  seems  to  their  readers 
but  the  heat  of  the  midnight  oil;  and  it  might  be 
supposed  that  George  Eliot,  who  burned  so  much  of 
this  oil,  would  have  suffered,  too,  from  dimness  of 
vision.  She  did  not  prepare  for  *  Romola,'  how- 
ever, as  the  schoolboy  prepares  for  an  exam.  The 
text  rotted  in  her  mind,  and  when  she  came  to  create 
she  created  with  enthusiasm  because  she  knew  her 
substance,  and  was  thrilled  with  joy  whenever  it  re- 
vealed its  possibilities ;  just  as  an  engineer,  let  us  say, 
is  delighted  with  each  new  manifestation  of  speed  in 
the  engine  he  has  constructed.  We  are  prepared  for 
the  note  in  her  diary,  "  Killed  Tito  in  great  excite- 
ment." [Fancy,  if  you  can,  Mr.  Ebers  saying,  "  Killed 
Cambyses  in  great  excitement."]  That  reveals  the 
Promethean  spark,  and  strikes  off  '  Romola '  from  the 


2i6  George  Eliot 

historical  novel  class  into  a  class  not  to  be  judged  by 
the  standards  of  mere  accurate  research. 

That  she  thoroughly  enjoyed  her  dramatic  situa- 
tions is  shown  by  the  fine  outbursts  with  which  she 
filled  them.  When  the  black  marks  become  magical 
to  Baldassare,  as  the  moonlight  falls  on  the  page  of 
Pausanias,  which,  an  hour  before,  had  suggested 
nothing  to  him,  but  which  now  conjured  up  a  world, 
all  the  vibrations  of  memory  are  shocked  into  re- 
awakened activity,  the  chill  of  age  falls  away  like  a 
broken  chain,  and  he  is  ready  to  shout  with  almost 
delirious  delight  in  his  new-found  power.  "  The 
light  was  come  again,  mother  of  knowledge  arid  joy  I " 
It  is  like  a  great  crash  of  keys  at  the  end  of  a  Wag- 
nerian theme. 

VI 

Her  essay  moves  in  a  broad,  dignified  style  from  a 
concept  well  thought  out  to  its  appropriate  finish. 
We  are  taken  into  its  secret  at  the  start,  and  given  a 
hint  of  the  outcome  early  in  its  progress.  Our  minds 
are  soon  keyed  to  the  proper  pitch ;  and  the  climax 
is,  for  the  most  part,  legitimately  reached.  The  style 
is  like  the  angel  of  dawn  described  in  the  Proem  to 
'  Romola,'  travelling  with  "  broad  slow  wing."  At  its 
best  it  is  a  grand  largo  in  open  diapason. 

There  is,  it  is  true,  an  occasional  anti-climax,  as 
the  reprieve  of  Hetty  at  the  gallows,  which  an  artist 
like  Mr.  Hardy,  for  example,  would  have  avoided,  as 
witness  the  end  of  '  Tess.'  But  that  is  out  of  regard 
for  our  feelings ;  and  her  Nemesis,  awful  as  it  is,  is 
tempered  with  mercy.  A  realist  is  always  in  danger 
of  extending  a  story  to  an  end  not  demanded  by  its 


Her  Art  217 

setting,  but  in  agreement  with  some  likely  possibility 
of  actual  experience.  It  is  quite  natural  that  Adam 
should  marry  Dinah,  but  the  real  Finis  is  in  the 
Stoniton  jail.  I  cannot  agree,  however,  with  the 
opinion  that  the  tragedy  of  Maggie  and  Tom  should 
have  been  spared  us.  Maggie's  life  was  a  series  of 
sacrifices.  Her  mistakes  were  all  of  the  impulsive 
sort.  The  theme  opened  with  a  sister's  love.  It 
ends  with  that  love,  in  a  noble  impulse,  and  in  a 
crowning  sacrifice.  It  is  the  deep-sounding  return 
at  the  end  of  the  symphony  to  its  rich  beginning. 
As  for  '  Deronda,'  the  question  is  not  so  easily  set- 
tled ;  but  if  the  Hebrew  note  is  true,  the  legitimate 
outcome  is  the  wedding  journey  to  the  East;  and  the 
anti-climax  would  have  been  reached  only  by  a  pic- 
ture of  Daniel's  experiences  there.  It  would  have 
been  a  little  too  much,  though,  to  have  asked  us  to 
look  on  at  Mirah,  sitting  at  a  window  in  Jerusalem, 
with  her  little  hands  folded,  waiting  Deronda's  return 
from  his  daily  business  of  re-establishing  the  tempo- 
ral power  of  the  Jews.  And  so  far  as  the  history  of 
Gwendolen  is  concerned,  which  is  vastly  more  impor- 
tant than  the  history  of  Deronda  and  Mirah,  the  end 
of  the  novel  is  true  to  life,  for  she  has  her  spiritual 
awakening  just  as  she  is  left  alone  to  carry  it  out. 

At  all  events,  George  Eliot  never  relies  on  her 
climax  to  save  her  story,  and  that  is  the  main  point. 
She  is  a  sensational  writer  in  the  right  sense.  She 
does  not  keep  her  climax  up  her  sleeve.  Her  tenors 
do  not  expire  singing  high  C's.  There  is  seldom  any 
straining  for  effect,  and  when  the  effect  is  terrible  it 
is  because  it  is  natural.  What  Maggie  wakens  to  on 
the  boat  with  Stephen  is  "  the  plash  of  water  against 
the  vessel,  and  the  sound  of  a  footstep  on  the  deck, 


21 8  George  Eliot 

and  the  awful  starlit  sky."  How  could  the  Tearfulness 
of  her  position  be  better  expressed,  —  the  natural 
emphasizing  the  supernatural?^ 


VII 

A  very  bad  name  has  gradually  become  attached  to 
the  idea  of  rhetoric.  The  art  of  persuasion  is  naturally 
the  art  of  special  pleading,  and  the  mere  beauty  of 
language  has  been  employed  to  dazzle  the  convic- 
tions. Words  are  weapons,  and  weapons  may  be  used 
basely.  Yet  all  living  art  must  be  rhetorical,  —  that  is, 
it  must  persuade  through  the  beauty  of  proportion, 
of  temper,  of  form,  of  matter,  of  truth;  and  fine 
thoughts  deserve  fine  dress.  The  quarrel  of  literature 
with  the  rhetoricians  is  that  they  put  poor  thoughts 
in  fine  dress,  like  a  kitchen  wench  decked  with  jewels. 
George  Eliot  is  not  afraid  of  large  language.  She 
has  no  nervous  dread  of  having  her  rhetoric  misun- 
derstood ;  where  the  canvas  requires  splendor,  she 
has  the  joy  of  the  true  artist  in  splashing  it  on.  If 
you  are  to  persuade  a  perverse  generation  that  beauty 
is  truth  and  truth  is  beauty,  you  must  emphasize  the 
truth  by  emphasizing  the  beauty. 

Pure  rhetoric,  indeed,  is  a  simple  thing:  it  is  but 
the  gold  found  by  the  touchstone,  which  little  instru- 
ment has  the  equal  power  of  rejecting  all  that  is  not 
gold,  but  looks  like  it.  Descriptive  strength  of  a  high 
order  is  impossible  without  it;  but  the  gifted  artist 
uses  it  only  to  heighten  an  effect  which  could  not  be 

^  The  Introduction  to  '  Felix  Holt '  is  a  microcosm  of  a  large  part 
of  what  is  valuable  in  George  Eliot,  being  an  excellent  example  at 
once  of  her  conservatism,  her  humor,  her  ethics,  her  pathos,  and  her 
method  of  germinating  the  plot. 


Her  Art  219 

otherwise  handled  without  loss  of  power.  The  differ- 
ence between  a  delicate  water-color  and  a  deep- 
toned  encaustic  is  precisely  the  difference  between 
the  sketch  of  Dinah  Morris  at  the  opening  of '  Adam 
Bede '  and  the  tragic  coloring  of  Hetty  towards  its 
close : 

It  was  one  of  those  faces  that  make  one  think  of  white 
flowers,  with  light  touches  of  color  on  their  pure  petals. 

It  was  the  same  rounded,  pouting,  childish  prettiness, 
but  with  all  love  and  belief  in  love  departed  from  it  —  the 
sadder  for  its  beauty,  like  that  wondrous  Medusa-face,  with 
the  passionate  passionless  lips. 

Antithesis,  which  is  perhaps  the  deadliest  of  rhetori- 
cal weapons,  was  easy  to  George  Eliot,  but  she  uses  it 
sparingly  on  account  of  its  inherent  possibilities  of 
misdirection.  She  is  really  a  master  of  both  epigram 
and  aphorism,  yet  is  not  reckoned  as  an  epigrammatic 
or  aphoristic  writer,  because  she  conscientiously  avoids 
dangerous  ground.  No  English  author  save  Shaks- 
pere  is  more  quotable.^  There  is  hardly  a  field  in  reli- 
gion, philosophy,  science,  art,  that  she  has  not  illumi- 
nated ;  and  yet  in  the  application  of  her  thought  to  any 
subject,  it  is  observable  that  it  is  the  solid  worth  of  the 
thought  that  attracts  rather  than  the  glitter  of  the 
apothegm.  An  aphorism  is  often  nothing  more  than 
a  witty  truism :  what  George  EUot  contributes  is  truth. 

1  Some  years  ago  I  set  out  to  make  a  George  Eliot  Calendar,  the 
plan  being  to  record  the  anniversary  of  some  event  of  interest  with 
each  day,  and  fitting  to  that  an  appropriate  quotation.  Before  finish- 
ing the  work  I  found  that  I  had  a  sufficient  number  of  events  to  fill 
out  calendars  for  three  years  —  i.  e.,  iioo  slips  —  and  this  without  any 
repetition ;  and  that  the  quotations  fitted  into  them  with  the  greatest 
possible  ease,  with  enough  left  over  for  still  another  year. 


2  20  George  Eliot 

She  enlarges  the  borders  of  thought  more  than  she 
makes  to  glisten  some  thought  already  well  defined. 
Like  Dr.  Holmes,  who  condemns  certain  lightnesses  of 
speech,  and  yet  shows  that  he  can  himself  indulge  in 
fooling  like  other  mortals,  by  putting  in  the  mouth 
of"  the  young  fellow  they  call  John  "  what  he  straight- 
way proceeds  to  punish  \k\.  propria  persona  as  the  Au- 
tocrat, George  Eliot  shows  herself  capable  of  the 
epigram  by  putting  it  in  the  mouths  of  her  witty  char- 
acters ;  it  is  for  the  most  part  confined  to  her  dialogue. 
Take  such  a  passage  as  — 

Under  every  guilty  secret  there  is  hidden  a  brood  of 
guilty  wishes,  whose  unwholesome  infecting  life  is  cher- 
ished by  the  darkness.  The  contaminating  effect  of  deeds 
often  lies  less  in  the  commission  than  in  the  consequent 
adjustment  of  our  desires  —  the  enlistment  of  our  self-inter- 
est on  the  side  of  falsity ;  as,  on  the  other  hand,  the  puri- 
fying influence  of  public  confession  springs  from  the  fact 
that  by  it  the  hope  in  lies  is  forever  swept  away,  and  the 
soul  recovers  the  noble  attitude  of  simplicity. 

Rochefoucauld,  it  is  certain,  would  have  put  that 
into  the  form  of  a  maxim  ;  but  she  is  too  anxious  not 
to  be  misunderstood  on  a  subject  of  such  weighty 
importance  to  crowd  into  an  inch  what  can  only  be 
fairly  stated  in  an  ell.  That  brilliant  Frenchman  would 
have  struck  out  the  "  most  often  "  in  George  Eliot's 
sentence,  "  The  touchstone  by  which  men  try  us  is  most 
often  their  own  vanity,"  thus  increasing  its  proverb-like 
quality,  but  lowering  its  careful  wisdom.  She  criti- 
cises Novalis,  in  *  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,'  for  his  "  ques- 
tionable" aphorism  "Character  is  destiny,"  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  not  the  whole  of  our  destiny;  and 
towards  the  close  of  the  book  she  says: 


Her  Art  221 

AH  people  of  broad,  strong  sense  have  an  instinctive  re- 
pugnance to  the  men  of  maxims  ;  because  such  people  early 
discern  that  the  mysterious  complexity  of  our  life  is  not  to 
be  embraced  by  maxims,  and  that  to  lace  ourselves  up  in 
formulas  of  that  sort  is  to  repress  all  the  divine  promptings 
and  inspirations  that  spring  from  growing  insight  and  sym- 
pathy. And  the  man  of  maxims  is  the  popular  represen- 
tative of  the  minds  that  are  guided  in  their  moral  judg- 
ment solely  by  general  rules,  thinking  that  these  will  lead 
them  to  justice  by  a  ready-made  patent  method,  without  the 
trouble  of  exerting  patience,  discrimination,  impartiality  — 
without  any  care  to  assure  themselves  whether  they  have 
the  insight  that  comes  from  a  hardly  earned  estimate  of 
temptation,  or  from  a  life  vivid  and  intense  enough  to  have 
created  a  wide  fellow-feeling  with  all  that  is  human. 

It  is  but  another  indication  of  her  honesty.  Her 
judgment  is  sound  because  it  keeps  always  in  view 
the  wrongs  possible  through  haste.  Her  wit  does  not 
blind  her  wisdom. 

Her  style  has  no  tricks.  You  may  look  in  vain  for 
traces  of  the  alliterative  habit,  for  example,  in  her  prose 
work.  She  is  content  with  the  plain  "  said  "  in  her  re- 
ports of  conversation,  and  never  employs  "  remarked," 
"  replied,"  "laughed,"  "  smiled,"  "  insinuated,"  like  the 
novelists  who  seem  to  think  it  necessary  to  indicate  in 
some  such  way  the  tone  of  the  speech,  which  should  be 
sufficiently  clear  from  its  body.  She  puts  no  tags  on 
her  tones ;  the  dialogue  explains  them.  I  do  not 
know  that  she  was  influenced  by  Thackeray,  and 
she  has  left  a  record  of  her  dislike  to  'Esmond;'^ 
but  her  form  is  most  at  fault  when  it  is  Thackerayean, 
as    in    the  opening  paragraphs    of  the  seventeenth 

1  '  Life,'  vol.  i.,  pp.  296  seq.   But  see,  per  contra, '  Life,'  vol.  ii.,  p.  351. 


222  George  Eliot 

chapter  of  'Adam  Bede,'  and  the  fourth  paragraph 
of  the  ninth  chapter  of  *  Deronda;  '  for  although  her 
style  is  as  leisurely  as  one  charged  with  feeling  can 
be,  it  does  not  easily  lend  itself  to  the  let-me-link-my- 
arm-in-yours-and-talk-it-over-as-we-saunter-down-the- 
street  method  of  the  mighty  satirist,  A  chorus  is 
now  and  then  a  little  tiresome.  "  Does  it  seem  incon- 
gruous to  you,"  she  asks,"  that  a  Middlemarch  surgeon 
should  dream  of  himself  as  a  discoverer?"  No,  no 
more  incongruous  that  he  should  hail  from  Coventry 
than  from  London ;  why  ask?  But  this  never  became 
a  mannerism,  and  was  always  prompted  by  a  loving 
zeal  to  set  an  action  or  a  character  in  just  the  right 
light. 

"  Nice  distinctions  are  troublesome ;  "  she  says  in 
*  Amos  Barton.'  "  It  is  so  much  easier  to  say  that 
a  thing  is  black  than  to  discriminate  the  peculiar 
shade  of  brown,  blue,  or  green  to  which  it  really  be- 
longs." The  speech  is  figurative,  with  the  point  of 
the  application  in  the  plea  for  a  careful  judgment  of 
character;  but  it  may  be  taken  in  its  literal  force  as 
well.  Remembering  the  reference  to  Dante  in  her 
'  Theophrastus '  essay,  and  her  contention  for  the 
necessity  of  correct  perceptions  if  we  are  to  build  a 
palace  of  delight  which  shall  be  something  more  than 
a  pack  of  cards,  a  study  of  her  fiction  convinces  one 
that  she  carried  out  in  her  own  work  what  she  com- 
mends in  another's.  She  is  almost  always  a  clear  writer. 
Her  descriptions  in  her  journal  are  a  sufficient  evi- 
dence of  a  keenly  developed  perceptive  ability,  en- 
couraged and  fostered,  no  doubt,  by  her  scientific 
investigations  with  Lewes.  Among  her  recollections 
of  the  Scilly  islands  are  their  rectangular  crevices, 
cubical  boulders,  (fval  basins.     The  easiest  thing  in 


Her  Art  223 

the  world  to  be  hazy  about  is  the  precise  form  of  a 
thing.  This  is  why  George  Eliot  is  fine  in  minute 
delineations :  she  knows  the  difference  between  shapes, 
and  can  distinguish  shades.  She  is  not  satisfied  with 
telling  us  that  old  Mrs.  Dempster  has  beautiful  white 
hair.  The  picture  does  not  hang  in  that  large  gallery 
of  our  memory  labelled  "  old  ladies  with  beautiful 
white  hair " :  there  is  a  special  salon  for  it.  She  is 
separated  from  the  other  old  ladies  because  her  hair 
is  "  of  that  peculiar  white  which  tells  that  the  locks 
have  once  been  blond."  "  You  saw  at  a  glance  that 
she  had  been  a  migjtoftne  blond."  If  we  find  this  per- 
ceptive sharpness  a  little  burdensome  here  and  there 
as  for  instance,  in  — 

And  the  slow  absent  glance  he  cast  around  at  the  upper 
windows  of  the  houses  had  neither  more  dissimulation  in  it, 
nor  more  ingenuousness,  than  belongs  to  a  youthful  well- 
opened  eyelid  with  its  unwearied  breadth  of  gaze ;  to  per- 
fectly pellucid  lenses ;  to  the  undimmed  dark  of  a  rich 
brown  iris ;  and  to  a  pure  cerulean-tinted  angle  of  white- 
ness streaked  with  the  delicate  shadows  of  long  eyelashes, 

it  is  perhaps  because  we  are  ourselves  not  trained  to 
exact  descriptions. 

I  wonder  how  many  "  lovers  of  nature  "  can  picture 
it  with  precise  fidelity.  It  is  the  highest  of  gifts  to 
have  the  power  to  reproduce  a  scene  on  paper  and  at 
the  same  time  to  make  it  poetical ;  the  rhetorical 
tendency  will  in  most  cases  destroy  the  precision. 
The  principal  charm  of  Tolstoi  to  critical  readers 
is  his  revolt  from  extravagant  rhetoric  to  the  plain 
truths  of  description;  but  the  result  may  often  be 
bareness,  a  puritanical  exaggeration  of  the  oppo- 
site of  what  was  revolted  from.     George  Eliot  never 


2  24  George  Eliot 

forgets  that  beauty  belongs  to  art;  that  a  scene  in 
nature  which  has  beauty  must  be  beautifully  repro- 
duced ;  that  the  poetry  of  nature  must  be  expressed 
poetically ;  but  with  all  this  the  saving  truth  that  an 
exact  description  and  a  poetical  description  must  go 
hand  in  hand,  that  the  most  exact  is  the  most  poeti- 
cal, and  the  most  poetical  the  most  exact.  The  very 
genius  of  Christmas  burns  in  the  words  describing 
Tom's  holidays  ;  the  hoar  spirit  of  old  England  floats 
through  them,  —  aye,  and  of  old  Time,  too. 

Fine  old  Christmas,  with  the  snowy  hair  and  ruddy  face, 
had  done  his  duty  that  year  in  the  noblest  fashion,  and  had 
set  off  his  rich  gifts  of  warmth  and  color  with  all  the  height- 
ening contrast  of  frost  and  snow. 

Snow  lay  on  the  croft  and  river-bank  in  undulations 
softer  than  the  limbs  of  infancy ;  it  lay  with  the  neatliest 
finished  border  on  every  sloping  roof,  making  the  dark-red 
gables  stand  out  with  a  new  depth  of  color :  it  weighed 
heavily  on  the  laurels  and  fir-trees  till  it  fell  from  them  with 
a  shuddering  sound ;  it  clothed  the  rough  turnip-field  with 
whiteness,  and  made  the  sheep  look  like  dark  blotches ;  the 
gates  were  all  blocked  up  with  the  sloping  drifts,  and  here 
and  there  a  disregarded  four-footed  beast  stood  as  if  petrified 
"  in  unrecumbent  sadness ;  "  there  was  no  gleam,  no 
shadow,  for  the  heavens,  too,  were  one  still,  pale  cloud  — 
no  sound  or  motion  in  anything  but  the  dark  river,  that 
flowed  and  moaned  like  an  unresting  sorrow.  But  old 
Christmas  smiled  as  he  laid  this  cruel-seeming  spell  on  the 
outdoor  world,  for  he  meant  to  light  up  home  with  new 
brightness,  and  give  a  keener  edge  of  delight  to  the  warm 
fragrance  of  food :  he  meant  to  prepare  a  sweet  imprison- 
ment that  would  strengthen  the  primitive  fellowship  of  kin- 
dred, and  make  the  sunshine  of  familiar  human  faces  as 
welcome  as  the  hidden  day-star. 


Her  Art  225 

The  joy  of  winter,  and  also  its  pain,  the  hush  of 
nature,  the  glow  of  the  season,  its  mystery  and  its 
charm,  are  there;  and  yet  the  picture  of  the  snow- 
covered  fields  is  as  realistically  true  to  what  we  see 
every  winter  as  its  poetry  is  true  to  our  inward  loving 
sense.  The  sentiment  does  not  warp  the  reality.  It 
is  a  rare  and  notable  gift. 

Ask  the  returned  driving  party  what  they  have  seen 
along  the  high-road,  and  you  will  be  answered  by  a 
chorus  of  glittering  generalities.  "  Such  a  lovely 
view !  "  "  Such  a  grand  stretch  of  mountains  ! " 
*'  Such  beautiful  wild  flowers  !  "  "  Such  a  wonderful 
lake!"  Particularize  they  cannot;  they  do  not  re- 
member what  they  saw  at  certain  points  ;  the  result 
of  the  day's  experience  is  a  hazy,  jumbled  sense  of 
pleasure,  with  a  total  absence  of  the  specialized 
rational  joy  of  the  observer.  But  if  George  Eliot 
were  of  the  party,  and  you  had  the  power  of  drawing 
her  out,  she  would  tell  you  quietly,  and  in  a  corner 
by  yourself: 

The  ride  .  .  .  lay  through  a  pretty  bit  of  midland 
landscape,  almost  all  meadows  and  pastures,  with  hedge- 
rows still  allowed  to  grow  in  bushy  beauty  and  to  spread 
out  coral  fruit  for  the  birds.  Little  details  gave  each  field 
a  particular  physiognomy,  dear  to  the  eyes  that  have  looked 
on  them  from  childhood ;  the  pool  in  the  comer  where  the 
grasses  were  dank  and  trees  leaned  whisperingly ;  the 
great  oak  shadowing  a  bare  place  in  mid-pasture ;  the  high 
bank  where  the  ash-trees  grew ;  the  sudden  slope  of  the  old 
marl-pit  making  a  red  background  for  the  burdock ;  the 
huddled  roofs  and  ricks  of  the  homestead  without  a  trace- 
able way  of  approach ;  the  gray  gate  and  fences  against  the 
depths  of  the  bordering  wood  ;  and  the  stray  hovel,  its  old,  old 
thatch  full  of  mossy  hills  and  valleys,  with  wondrous  modu- 


226  George  Eliot 

lations  of  light  and  shadow,  such  as  we  travel  far  to  see  in 
later  life,  and  see  larger  but  not  more  beautiful.  These  are 
the  things  that  make  the  gamut  of  joy  in  landscape  to  mid- 
land-bred souls  —  the  things  they  toddled  among,  or  perhaps 
learned  by  heart  standing  between  their  father's  knees 
while  he  drove  leisurely. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  possession  of 
this  faculty  made  George  Eliot  a  fine  critic.  I  use 
the  word  advisedly.  Her  essays  rank  with  Arnold's, 
as  may  be  proved  by  comparing  the  article  of  each 
on  Heine.  Turn  over  the  Belles-Lettres  columns  of 
the  Westminster  from  July,  1855,  to  October,  1856, 
&nd  note  with  what  insight  and  ready  appreciation  of 
merit,  with  what  admiration  for  what  is  admirable,  and 
with  what  skill  at  the  detection  of  false  notes  the  then 
obscure  Miss  Evans  wrote  those  necessarily  hurried 
reviews.  That  she  refused  to  acknowledge  them  in 
her  collected  essays  is  merely  another  proof  of  that 
critical  exclusiveness  which  would  have  nothing  but 
the  best  perpetuated,  and  does  not  interfere  with  the 
enjoyment  which  their  positive  excellence  carries  to 
this  day.  I  allude  in  another  place  to  the  interest 
attached  to  her  critique  of*  Hard  Times  '  discovered  in 
these  old  files ;  and,  remembering  the  unjust  remarks 
of  Ruskin  on  her  '  Mill  on  the  Floss,'  it  is  worth  while 
to  notice  that  in  her  paper  on  '  Modern  Painters,'  ^ 
she  employs  a  catholic  breadth  quite  the  opposite  to 
her  critic's  prejudices.  Her  object,  she  maintains, — 
and  it  is  the  object  of  all  her  criticisms,  —  is  to  care 
more  to  know  what  the  author  says  than  what  other 
people  think  he  ought  to  say.  She  simply  laughs  at 
the  peculiarly  Ruskinian  Preface,  where  the  papal 

1  Westminster  Review,  April,  1856. 


Her  Art  227 

promulgation  is  uttered  forth  that  the  author  is  in- 
capable of  falling  into  an  illogical  deduction.  "  We 
value  a  writer  not  in  proportion  to  his  freedom  from 
faults,  but  in  proportion  to  his  positive  excel- 
lences,—  to  the  variety  of  thought  he  contributes 
and  suggests,  to  the  amount  of  gladdening  and  en- 
ergizing emotions  he  excites."  She  has  the  three  es- 
sential characteristics  of  the  fine  essayist:  penetration 
of  vision,  clearness  of  expression,  sympathy  of  judg- 
ment.^ She  told  Kate  Field  that  she  wrote  reviews 
because  she  knew  too  little  of  humanity;  and  the 
paper  on  Lecky  was  the  only  one  composed  after  her 
creative  period  had  set  in.  She  left  injunctions  that  no 
pieces  printed  by  her  prior  to  1857  should  be  repub- 
lished,^ and  she  carefully  revised  all  the  work  of  her 
Westminster  days  the  republication  of  which  she  sanc- 
tioned. This  hesitancy  about  reviewing  is  a  marked 
characteristic  of  our  author,  indicative  as  it  is  of  her 
honorable  caution  about  dealing  with  a  subject  which 
had,  in  all  likelihood,  not  engrossed  her  attention  with 

1  No  student  of  her  work  ever  joins  in  the  usual  dispraise  of  '  Theo- 
phrastus,'  as  that  book  carries  us  into  her  workshop,  as  it  were,  and 
we  see  the  artificer  surrounded  by  her  tools.  Each  essay  has  a  clearly 
defined  end,  which  is  pursued  with  vigor  and  humor ;  and  each  essay 
contains  also  the  germ  of  a  story  which,  you  feel,  could  be  well  worked 
out  if  the  author  had  the  time.  Without  '  Theophrastus  '  we  should 
not  have  the  whole  of  George  Eliot.  It  is  folly  to  resent  a  book  of 
essays  from  the  pen  of  a  novelist;  concerning  such  things  as  are 
treated  in  '  Theophrastus,'  the  best  novelist  ought  to  make  the  best 
essayist,  just  as  Salvini's  papers  on  certain  matters  of  the  stage  have 
a  peculiar  claim  which  the  closest  student  of  the  drama  who  is  never- 
theless not  an  actor  could  not  possess.  "  A  book,"  says  Mr.  Birrell, 
in  one  of  his  delightful  touch-and-go  papers,  "which  we  were  once 
assured  well-nigh  destroyed  the  reputation  of  its  author,  but  which 
would  certainly  have  established  that  of  most  living  writers  upon  a 
surer  foundation  than  they  at  present  occupy." 

*  See  Preface  to  'Essays'  by  Charles  Lee  Lewes. 


228  George  Eliot 

the  same  force  as  it  had  the  author's,  and  in  her  judg- 
ment of  which,  therefore,  she  was  liable  to  err.  And 
we  have  no  reason  to  complain  of  the  cessation  of  her 
essays,  because  that  meant  the  continuation  of  her 
fiction,  the  blaze  of  which  has  dimmed  our  eyes 
to  the  earlier  work.  The  criticisms  must  not  be 
omitted,  however,  in  any  comprehensive  review  of 
her  life. 

For  the  same  reason,  she  would  not  read  reviews 
of  her  own  books ;  which  is  an  indication,  in  turn,  of 
another  interesting  phenomenon, —  a  strength  of  will 
sufficient  to  cope  with  and  subdue  a  natural  curiosity. 
It  takes  character  to  deliberately  shut  one's  eyes  to 
what  is  printed  about  one.  Think  of  George  Eliot 
calmly  refusing  to  read  all  criticisms,^  and  then  think 

1  George  Eliot's  prejudice,  of  course,  was  directed  against  the  hope- 
lessly mistaken  criticism  which  puts  every  creation  of  art  into  the 
Procrustean  bed  of  a  preconceived  and  obstinately  maintained  theory  ; 
and  which  can  never  enter  sympathetically  into  phases  not  experimen- 
tally known  to  its  puny  self.  And  yet  her  sense  of  humor  might  have 
been  fed  by  some  of  the  amusing  stuff  written  of  her  work.  The 
classification  of  Ladislaw  as  "a  worthless  Bohemian"  would  have 
been  an  offence  in  her  nostrils  ;  and  it  puts  the  writer  on  the  dry-as- 
dust  plane  of  Casaubon  without  Casaubon's  excuse.  But  the  maga- 
zine which  contains  that  hit-or-miss  characterization  also  offers  the 
profound  suggestion  that  we  acquiesce  in  Celia's  marriage  to  a  baronet 
because  of  our  perhaps  unconscious  prejudice  in  favor  of  county 
families  over  tradespeople  ;  which  prejudice  explains  why  we  view  as 
a  mesalliance  the  marriage  of  Rosamond  to  the  grand-nephew  of  a 
baronet,  although  Celia  is  no  better  than  Rosamond !  Here  is  sub- 
stance for  mirth,  and  a  little  reading  of  this  sort  of  thing  would  have 
done  George  Eliot  no  harm. 

The  peculiarly  feminine  idea  of  mission  —  not  that  all  male  authors 
are  free  from  it  —  was  intensified  in  her  by  a  supersensitive  dread  that 
the  message  would  be  misunderstood  ;  and  her  fears  could  be  removed, 
or  at  the  best  minimized,  only  by  the  loving  care  of  her  companion's 
censorship.  Her  tolerance  did  not  include  a  welcome  to  the  hostile 
reviewing  of  work  she  brought  forth  with  pangs  of  honest  labor.  Her 
books  were  he)-  children,  and  the  critics  were  stepmothers. 


Her  Art  229 

of  Charlotte  Bronte  weeping  over  the  Timei  brutali- 
ties at  her  publisher's  breakfast-table  ! 

This  clearness  condenses  into  a  single  happy  word 
at  times,  which  does  duty  for  a  sentence.  There  is  a 
perfect  picture  in  her  metaphorical  adjective  describ- 
ing Casaubon's  "  sandy"  absorption  of  his  wife's  care, 
Fred  Vincy  is  in  the  '* pmk-skinjted"  stage  of  typhoid 
fever  ;  in  almost  everybody's  else  hands  he  would 
have  been  "  trembling  on  the  verge  "  of  it.  A  "  violon- 
cello'' voice  is  a  novel  inspiration  for  "  barytone,"  and 
a  "  chiaivscHi'o "  parentage  is  a  stroke  of  genius. 
The  sense  of  Baldassare's  weakness  pressed  on  him 
like  a  '^frosty"  ache.  Mr.  Vincy's  florid  style  is 
contrasted  with  the  "  Franciscan  "  tints  of  Bulstrode. 
**  Ethereal  chimes "  is  worthy  of  Charlotte  Bronte. 
Her  dramatic  sense  prompted  the  sure  adjective  at 
critical  moments.  As  the  French  army  approached 
Florence,  the  dark  grandeur  of  the  moving  mass  over- 
whelmed the  onlookers  with  its  "  long-winding  terrible 
pomp."  And  there  is  fine  recklessness,  suitable 
to  a  wild  acceptance  of  the  future  as  a  result  of  a 
delirious  pleasure  in  the  present,  in  her  "  hell-brav- 
ing joy." 

She  is  not  afraid  to  use  a  word  usually  stamped  as 
vulgar  if  circumstances  justify.  "  There  was  some- 
thing very  fine  in  Lydgate's  look  just  then,  and  any  one 
might  have  been  encouraged  to  bet  on  his  achieve- 
ment." That  is  just  the  right  word  ;  none  other  would 
do  at  all.  She  employs  "kick"  and  "roast"  in  the 
same  manner.  She  is  fortunate  in  her  choice  of  words 
with  the  prefix  tin,  —  as  "  unapplausive  audience," 
"  uncherishing  years ; "  although  "  unfecundated  egg  " 
is  perhaps  unnecessary,  as  the  more  recogni:iable 
"  unfruitful "    (she    does    not    mean    "  unhatched "} 


230  George  Eliot 

would  have  answered.  "  Otherworldliness "  is  not 
her  invention,  Lewes  having  used  it  in  his  '  History 
of  Philosophy,'  and,  it  may  be,  others  before  him. 

One  has  the  frequent  feeling,  in  reading  George 
Eliot,  that  in  this  happy  selective  ability  the  one 
correct  word  is  found  to  describe  what  must  otherwise 
be  described  only  by  circumlocution,  and  that  no 
synonym  could  have  been  used  without  weakening 
the  picture.  Mrs.  Poyser's  dairy  is  described  as  "  a 
scene  to  sicken  for  with  a  sort  of  calenture  "  in  hot 
and  dusty  streets.  "  Fever  "  would  have  been  alto- 
gether too  tame  and  too  generalizing.  If  a  cruel 
fate  has  ever  kept  you  close  to  a  stifling  office  through 
an  oppressive  summer,  and  if  before  your  aching  eye- 
balls have  passed  mocking  visions  of  children  playing 
in  meadows,  and  wide  ocean  sweeps,  t/zen  you  know 
what  a  word  in  due  season  this  "  calenture  "  is,  —  that 
tropical  delirium  which  drives  sailors  to  hurl  them- 
selves into  the  sea,  which  seems  to  them  a  grassy 
field.  If  you  know  your  George  Eliot,  your  sicken- 
ing for  the  country  at  such  a  season  will  be  heightened 
by  recollections  of  her  "  gleams  and  greciith  of  sum- 
mer." What  other  word  would  so  vividly  represent 
the  living  green  for  which  you  long?  "  Verdure," 
after  that,  sounds  almost  as  unreal  as  Mrs.  Henry 
Wood's  "  pellucid  tear  of  humanity." 

Her  exactness  is  shown  in  such  a  description  as 
"  minim  mammal,"  which  is  more  scientifically  precise 
than  "  most  minute  mammal."  Mr.  Chubb  wore  so 
much  of  the  mazarine  color  of  the  Whig  candidate  at 
the  Treby  election  that  he  looked  like  a  very  large 
" gentianella"  That  flower  is  not  so  well  known 
to  most  of  us  as  the  gentian,  of  the  same  family, 
and    which   other    writers  would    have   used   in  its 


Her  Art  231 

place.  But  the  gentian  lacks  the  intense  blue 
which  the  author  meant  to  convey,  and  which  no 
flower  but  the  gentianella  does  convey,  in  connection 
with  size. 

She  is  not  a  constant  neologist,  like  De  Quincey, 
and  her  invention  of  new,  or  employment  of  forgotten, 
words  has  not  always  the  immediately  appreciated 
value  of  that  master,  who  uses  "  parvanimity "  and 
"  dyspathy"  with  a  reason  difficult  to  apply  to  George 
Eliot's  "  innutrient,"  with  a  choice  already  at  hand 
between  "  innutritive  "  and  "  innutritions."  She  shares 
the  rewards,  however,  as  well  as  the  penalties,  of  the 
fearless,  as  may  be  noted  by  the  quotation  of  this 
sentence  from  her  works  in  all  the  dictionaries,  in 
illustration  of  the  underscored  word :  "  Has  any  one 
ever  pinched  into  its  pihiloiis  smallness  the  cobweb 
of  prematrimonial  acquaintanceship?  " 

In  her  descriptions  of  the  varying  moods  of  nature, 
the  functional  power  of  the  adjective  is  especially  no- 
ticeable. A  sky  has  that  "  woolly"  look  which  comes 
before  snow.  She  speaks  of  the  "  dewy  "  starlight  as 
a  *' da/>ttsmal "  epoch.  The  still  lanes  on  a  bright 
spring  day  are  filled  with  a  "  sacred  silent  beauty  like 
that  of  fretted  aisles."  The  snow  falls  from  the  laurels 
and  fir  trees  with  a  "  shuddering"  sound.  (You  see  it 
falling,  and  then  close  your  eyes  to  listen  for  the  dear 
familiar  sound.)  Gwendolen  was  married  on  a  "  rimy" 
morning  in  November.  The  sunlight  stealing  through 
the  boughs  plays  about  Tito  and  Tessa  **  like  a 
winged  thing." 

These  lyrical  strokes  are  not  all :  the  broad  chest- 
notes  of  nature  are  sounded  also.  Surely  it  is  as  if 
Lablache  were  once  more  singing  "  In  diesen  heil'- 
gen  Hallen  "  to  hear 


232  George  Eliot 

...  the  solemn  glory  of  the  afternoon,  with  its  long 
swathes  of  light  between  the  far-off  rows  of  limes,  whose 
shadows  touched  each  other. 

And  the  spirit-music  of  Maggie  in  the  Red  Deeps 
listening  "  to  the  hum  of  insects,  like  the  tiniest  bell 
on  the  garment  of  Silence,"  and  watching  "  the  sun- 
light piercing  the  distant  boughs  as  if  to  chase  and 
drive  home  the  truant  heavenly  blue  of  the  wild 
hyacinths  "  comes,  as  it  were,  from  the  echo  organ  in 
the  roof  of  some  dim  cathedral. 

Similes  are  made  striking  in  George  Eliot  by  the 
beautiful  symmetry  she  discovers  between  the  fact 
described  and  the  corresponding  fact  in  nature. 
Worldly  faces  at  a  funeral  "  have  the  same  effect  of 
grating  incongruity  as  the  sound  of  a  coarse  voice 
breaking  the  solemn  silence  of  night."  The  rough 
brother  in  '  The  Lifted  Veil '  is  lost  to  fine  influences, 
which  are  as  little  felt  by  him  "  as  the  delicate  white 
mist  is  felt  by  the  rock  it  caresses."  In  the  eloquent 
belief  of  Mordecai,  the  heritage  of  Israel  lives  in  the 
veins  of  millions  "  as  a  power  without  understanding, 
like  the  morning  exultation  of  herds."  The  rustle  of 
the  silk  garments  of  the  syndics  on  the  pavement 
"  could  be  heard  like  rain  in  the  night." 

And  how  happy  in  her  choice  of  names  !  Adam 
Bede — the  father  of  men,  and  the  father  of  English 
history;  suggesting  original  strength  and  primal 
power.  We  can  see  the  red  deep  earth  in  her  Loam- 
shire,  and  can  feel  the  quivering  slants  of  sunlight 
through  the  Red  Deeps.  We,  too,  are  "  in  love  with 
moistness,"  as  we  stand  with  George  Eliot  leaning 
over  the  bridge  on  the  February  afternoon  on  which 
Maggie's  story  opens.     "  How  lovely  the  little  river 


Her  Art  233 

is,  with  its  dark,  changing  wavelets !  It  seems  to  me 
like  a  living  companion  while  I  wander  along  the 
banks  and  listen  to  its  low,  placid  voice  as  to  the  voice 
of  one  who  is  deaf  and  loving."  The  little  river  is 
the  Ripple.  Fedalma  means  "  fidelity,"  and  gives  in  a 
name  the  explanation  of  a  character.  The  cold 
aristocracy  of  family  glitters  with  the  right  frostiness 
in  Grandcourt.  One  would  have  to  think  a  long  time 
before  improving  on  such  fine  old  Jewish  names  as 
Deronda,  Charisi,  Kalonymos ;  and  Casaubon  hints  at 
scholarly  seclusion.  She  was  not  afraid  of  novelty, 
either,  because  Gwendolen  appears  in  '  Deronda  '  for 
the  first  time  in  English  fiction.-^ 

VIII 

George  Eliot  was  the  reverse  of  a  pedant.  She 
had  no  regard  for  futile  learning,  as  her  treatment  of 
Casaubon  shows ;  and  her  seemingly  pedantic  use  of 
scientific  words,  now  and  then,  is  but  the  accidental 
overflow  of  her  vast  reading,  Luke,  the  miller,  is 
"  subdued  by  a  general  mealiness,  like  an  auricula  " 
—  the  fruit  of  her  zoological  studies  by  the  seaside  with 
Lewes.  She  makes  "  laches  "  stand  for  "  negligence  " 
(having  Macaulay's  authority  there) ,  and  "  opoledoc  " 
for  "  liniment ;"  "prc^UriU  "  for  "  past,"  and  "  loobies  " 
for  the  better  known  "  gawks  "  or  "  lubbers."  A  type 
is  spoken  of  as  presenting  a  "  brutish  unmodifiable- 
ness."  Jermyn  wishes  to  "  smoothen  "  the  current  of 
talk,  which  is  unnecessarily  Old  English ;  and  "  con- 
tradictiously  "  is  grafted  upon  an  obsolete  adjective. 

1  It  is  possible  that  Mr.  Kipling  got  a  hint  for  a  catching  patro- 
nymic from  the  Mrs.  Gadsby  who  is  mentioned  incidentally  in  '  Daniel 
Deronda '  as  the  yeomanry  captain's  wife ;  just  as  his  "  That 's 
another  story  "  was  borrowed  from  Sterne. 


2  34  George  Eliot 

But  what  is  really  the  matter  with  the  '^dynamic** 
glance  of  Gwendolen,  which  has  raised  such  a  hubbub  ? 
The  word  was  seized  with  peculiar  power  at  a  time 
when  electricity  was  revealing  new  possibilities  of 
energy  ;  and  the  idea  of  force  production,  of  a  dis- 
turbed equilibrium,  of  energy  not  static  but  in  active 
motion,  could  not  be  completely  emphasized  by  any 
other  term.  Nor  have  we  any  quarrel  with  her 
"  systole  and  diastole,"  either  in  '  Middlemarch,'  when 
applied  to  rational  conversation,  or  in  '  Deronda,' 
when  applied  to  blissful  companionship.  And  who 
but  a  purist  would  object  to  the  humorous  dash  she 
gives  to  the  word  "  chancy,"  —  her  invention,  I  believe, 
in  this  significance  of  *'  untrustworthy"  and  which  she 
used  more  than  once,  as,  e.  g.,  "  By  a  roundabout 
course  even  a  gentleman  may  make  of  himself  a 
chancy  personage."  She  forgets,  once  in  a  while, 
that  her  readers  may  not  be  as  learned  as  herself; 
but  this  is  a  compliment  which  it  is  ungracious  in  us 
to  fling  back  at  her, —  as  much  of  a  compliment  as 
when  she  supposes  us  sufficiently  acquainted  with 
literature  to  accept  without  question  her  metaphors 
of"  Laputan,"  "  Mawworm,"  and  "  Harpagons." 

Even  granting  a  needlessly  complex  term  here  and 
there,  it  is  interesting  to  note  how  she  herself  pokes 
fun  at  those  who  use  the  same  word  without  the  same 
intelligence.  She  seems,  for  example,  to  be  rather 
fond  of  **  energttmen,"  and  it  may  be  that  she  wishes 
to  defend  its  proper  use  in  holding  the  editor  of  the 
Trumpet  up  to  ridicule  for  playing  with  edged  tools, 
which  should  be  handled  only  by  trained  workmen : 

In  a  leading  article  of  the  Trumpet  Keck  character- 
ized   Ladislaw's   speech   at   a   Reform    meeting   as    "  the 


Her  Art  235 

violence  of  an  energuraen  —  a  miserable  effort  to  shroud 
in  the  brilliancy  of  fireworks  the  daring  of  irresponsible 
statements  and  the  poverty  of  a  knowledge  which  was  of 
the  cheapest  and  most  recent  description."  "  That  was  a 
rattling  article  yesterday,  Keck,"  said  Dr.  Sprague,  with 
sarcastic  intentions.  "  But  what  is  an  energumen?"  "  Oh, 
a  term  that  came  up  in  the  French  Revolution,"  said  Keck. 

Some  of  her  seeming  pedantry,  indeed,  is  alto- 
gether humorous,  as  when  she  refers  to  Dempster's 
"  preponderant  occiput  and  closely  clipped  coronal 
surface,"  —  a  jesting  glance  back  at  the  days  when  she 
discussed  phrenology  with  Mr.  Bray.  Her  Darwinian 
reading  is  shown  in  her  reference  to  Molly  carrying 
a  large  jug,  two  small  mugs,  and  four  drinking  cans, 
all  full,  as  an  interesting  example  of  the  "  prehensile" 
power  of  the  human  hand,  and  in  her  jolly  talk  about 
Bob  Jakin's  big  thumb — a  "  singularly  broad  specimen 
of  that  difference  between  the  man  and  the  monkey.*' 
And,  just  as  we  saw  while  considering  her  religion,  a 
difference  between  her  private  views  and  her  artistic 
expressions,  so  we  find  more  pedantry  in  her  letters 
to  friends  than  in  her  novels.  We  need  not  ask 
which  is  the  real  George  Eliot.  There  is  always  in 
letter-writing  of  the  subjective  sort  an  individualistic 
pressure  which  may  easily  turn  the  large  language  of 
generous  art  into  a  narrowing  expediency.  In  view 
of  her  public  work,  however,  there  is  no  need  to 
concentrate  the  gaze  on  such  of  her  private  letters 
as  Mr.  Cross  has  seen  fit  to  select  from  the  materials 
at  his  command.  They  are  only  a  partial  portrait ; 
the  full  picture  is  the  other. 

But  what  is  most  remarkable  is  that  her  trained 
skilfulness  in  the  fields  of  investigation  goes  hand  in 


236  George  Eliot 

hand  with  the  rapture  of  her  most  ethereal  fancies. 
The  same  George  Eh'ot  who  wrote  — 

Certain  seeds  which  are  required  to  find  a  nidus  for 
themselves  under  unfavorable  circumstances  have  been 
supplied  by  nature  with  an  apparatus  of  hooks,  so  that 
they  will  get  a  hold  on  very  unreceptive  surfaces.  The 
spiritual  seed  which  had  been  scattered  over  Mr.  Tulliver 
had  apparently  been  destitute  of  any  corresponding  pro- 
vision, and  had  slipped  off  to  the  winds  again,  from  a  total 
absence  of  hooks  — 

could  speak  of  an  emotion  passing  over  the  face 
"  like  the  spirit  of  a  sob." 

Nobody  denies  her  occasional  obscurity.  A  good 
many  readers  have  echoed  to  the  heading  to  the 
opening  chapter  of  '  Daniel  Deronda '  Dolfo  Spini's 
perplexed  cry,  "  It  seems  to  me  no  clearer  than  the 
bottom  of  a  sack,"  although  George  Eliot  was  under 
the  double  difficulty  there  of  conveying  a  thought 
which  should  be  the  excuse  for  beginning  a  story 
just  where  she  did  —  a  very  unusual  place,  namely, 
in  the  middle  of  it,  serving  her  roast  before  her  soup 
—  and  of  conveying  this  in  her  favorite  pastime  of 
a  style  imitative  of  another  author.  "  Moment-hand," 
in  "  His  mind  glanced  over  the  girl-tragedies  that  are 
going  on  in  the  world  hidden,  unheeded,  as  if  they 
were  but  tragedies  of  the  copse  or  hedgerow,  where 
the  helpless  drag  wounded  wings  forsakenly,  and 
streak  the  shadowed  moss  with  the  red  moment-hand 
of  their  own  death,"  has  given  commentators  some 
trouble.  But  I  am  weak  enough  to  think  the  sentence 
fine  in  its  illustrative  suggestion  of  unutterable  pathos 
in  the  fate  of  tender  human  beings,  so  unheeded  that 
it  can  only  be  likened  to  a  shot  bird  in  the  forest, — 


Her  Art  237 

its  death  a  thing  hidden  from  the  great  outside-world, 
and  forgotten  at  the  moment  of  its  consummation. 

But  there  are  no  purposely  invented  Meredithian 
darknesses ;  and  meeting  her  obscurity,  one  has  the 
sensation  of  inevitableness,  not  of  teasing  deceit. 
You  guess  that  Browning  is  playing  with  you  ;  you 
know  that  George  Eliot  is  not. 

And  her  friends  must  acknowledge  that  there  is 
some  dry  reading  in  her  fiction,  as,  for  example,  the 
chapter,  'A  Learned  Squabble'  in  *  Romola.'  The 
talk  of  the  Club  in  '  Deronda '  is  hard,  but  it  has  the 
value  of  a  background  to  Mordecai's  ideas,  emphasiz- 
ing the  tremendous  odds  against  them.  When  she 
nods,  it  is  over  some  deep  learning,  for  she  was  a 
very  learned  woman.  The  dead  languages  were  not 
dead  to  her.  She  could  say  with  Tito  that  she  had 
rested  in  the  groves  of  Helicon  and  tasted  of  the 
fountain  of  Hippocrene.  It  was  no  slippered  ease, 
with  a  pipe,  a  decanter,  and  an  encyclopaedia  within 
reach.  It  was  not  so  much  a  desire  for  learning  with 
her  as  it  was  a  passion  for  knowledge.  And  it  was  a 
down-to-date  knowledge. 

After  waiting  for  the  note  to  be  carried  to  Mrs.  Bulstrode,. 
Lydgate  rode  away,  forming  no  conjectures,  in  the  first 
instance,  about  the  history  of  Raffles,  but  rehearsing  the 
whole  argument,  which  had  lately  been  much  stirred  by  the 
publication  of  Dr.  Ware's  abundant  experience  in  America, 
as  to  the  right  way  of  treating  cases  of  alcoholic  poisoning 
such  as  this.  Lydgate,  when  abroad,  had  already  been 
interested  in  this  question.  He  was  strongly  convinced 
against  the  prevalent  practice  of  allowing  alcohol  and 
persistently  administered  large  doses  of  opium;  and  he 
had  repeatedly  acted  on  this  conviction  with  a  favorable 
result. 


238  George  Eliot 

She  could  say  of  herself,  as  Mordecai  said  of  him- 
self: "I  know  the  philosophies  of  this  time  and  of 
other  times;  if  I  chose  I  could  answer  a  summons 
before  their  tribunals." 

This  profundity  was  not  wholly  due  to  her  intellec- 
tual grasp,  but  was,  it  must  be  reiterated,  in  large 
part  the  result  of  her  conscientiousness.  She  had 
what  she  says  Mr.  Stelling,  Tom  Tulliver's  teacher, 
had  not,  a  "  a  deep  sense  of  the  infinite  issues 
belonging  to  every-day  duties."  The  number  of  her 
volumes  is  not  large.  Seventeen  years  elapsed 
between  'Adam  Bede'  and  '  Daniel  Deronda,'  and  five 
years  between  her  two  latest  fictions.  For  the  same 
reason  that  she  refused  to  write  reviews  after  the 
beginning  of  her  creative  period,  she  declined  her 
share  of  all  those  flattering  proposals  of  publishers 
anxious  for  the  appearance  of  great  names  on  their 
advertisements.  She  said  "no"  to  Macmillan's  ofier 
to  write  the  '  Shakspere '  for  his  *  Men  of  Letters ' 
series,  although  none  could  have  done  it  better. 
She  put  up  with  Smith's  offer  of  ;i^7,ooo,  instead 
of  the  ;Cio,ooo  guaranteed  for  the  publication  of 
'  Romola  *  in  Corn/till,  because  the  acceptance  of 
the  larger  sum  would  have  necessitated  a  speed 
which  she  would  not  undertake  in  justice  to  the 
solemnity  of  her  subject.  And  though  she  be- 
came rich  through    her   works,^  she  was  herself  an 

^  It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  she  became  a  wealthy  woman.  There 
is  no  complete  record  of  her  earnings,  but  it  is  apparent  that  she  was 
treated  most  generously  by  her  publishers,  whose  vision  was  not 
narrowed  to  superfine  distinctions  existing  between  legal  and  ethical 
claims,  but,  on  the  contrary,  was  of  such  noble  breadth  that  the  two 
became  merged.  ;^8oo  were  the  stipulated  terms  for  '  Adam  Bede,' 
together  with  the  copyright  for  four  years.  Later,  Blackwood  paid 
her,  voluntarily,  at  different  times,  ;^400  and  ;£^8oo,  with  the  surrender 


Her  Art  239 

example  of  Felix  Holt's  doctrine  to  put  away  the 
desire  to  be  rich.  ^ 

She  takes  her  time  in  observing,  and  she  observes 
thoroughly.  Most  tourists  give  half  a  day  to  Goethe's 
town;  but  compare  the  scholarly  leisure  of  '  Three 
Months  in  Weimar'  with  the  slap-dash,  hit-or-miss 
reportorial  speed  of  the  special  correspondent  in  *  The 
West  from  a  Car  Window '  —  not  one  town,  but  the 
whole  West  at  sixty  miles  an  hour !  ^ 

IX 

The  poetry  of  observation,  of  description,  of  nar- 
ration, is  necessarily  contained  in  a  long-swinging 
line ;   and  George  Eliot  adopts  as  her  most  uniform 

of  the  copyright.  Altogether  she  probably  received  over  $300,000 
from  her  works,  and  not  less  than  $100,000  from  the  sale  of  '  Middle- 
march  '  and  '  Daniel  Deronda '  alone.  As  indicative  of  the  value  of 
reputation,  the  Atlantic  Monthly  gave  her  ;i^300  for  her  poem,  'Agatha,' 
—  an  enormous  sum  for  a  piece  which  would  probably  have  been 
returned,  with  the  thanks  of  the  editor,  to  any  unknown  or  little- 
known  writer. 

1  Charlotte  Bronte  could  not  write  faster;  George  Eliot  would  wot. 

2  It  is  perhaps  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  she  was,  toto  ccelo, 
removed  from  the  blue  stockings.  After  her  intellectual  revolt  from 
evangelicalism  we  find  her  recording  her  detestation  of  the  Hannah 
More  type  of  woman,  classifying  it  with  singing  mice  and  card-playing 
pigs.  For  "  Woman's  Rights "  she  has  the  most  cutting  of  all 
contempts  —  the  contempt  of  absolute  silence.  She  would  have  been 
amazed  at  some  of  the  later  demands  of  the  "  new  woman,"  and  she 
would  have  shrunk  from  the  publicity  of  many  of  its  advocates  ;  for, 
with  all  her  mental  boldness,  she  was  a  timid,  which  is  to  say  a  true, 
woman.  [Jowett  wrote,  on  hearing  of  her  death  :  "  Elle  itait  flus femme 
and  had  more  feminine  qualities  than  almost  any  woman  I  have  ever 
known."  'Life  and  Letters  of  Benjamin  Jowett,' vol.  ii.,  p.  181.]  Yet 
she  always  advocated  any  plan  looking  towards  a  real  advance  for 
her  sex,  favoring,  for  example,  the  petition  that  women  should  have 
legal  rights  to  their  own  earnings  and  founding  the  George  Henry 
Lewes  studentship  at  Cambridge,  for  original  research  in  physiology, 
for  men  and  women. 


240  George  Eliot 

verse  the  ten-syllabled  heroic  iambic  metre.  It  is  the 
metre  of  epic  as  well  as  of  dramatic  movement,  — 
the  metre  of  '  Paradise  Lost '  and  the  '  Task,'  as  of 
'Hamlet'  and  '  Tamburlaine.'  She  is  really  an  epic 
poet,  as  the  consideration  of  her  largo  prose  might 
suggest,  and  she  borrows  the  dramatic  form  merely 
for  convenience.  Critics  have  pointed  out  defective 
lines  in  'The  Spanish  Gypsy;'  but  (although  she 
had  authority  for  purposely  irregular  verses  ^)  to  my 
mind  its  greatest  defect  is  its  uniformity,  its  continu- 
ous flow,  its  lack  of  irregularities.  Marlowe's  '  Faust  * 
and  Jonson's  '  Alchemist '  —  to  take  two  examples  of  a 
dramatic  poem  —  contain  defective  lines,  but  they 
occur  in  the  passionate  speech  of  the  dramatis 
personce,  as  if  the  thought  were  too  impetuous  to  be 
confined  within  the  limits  of  prosody;  which  was  the 
feeling,  doubtless,  which  led  Shakspere  to  put  some 
of  his  uncontrollably  turbulent  talk  into  prose.  But 
the  wild  speech  of  Silva's  final  outburst  against  Zarca 
is  as  easy  to  scan  (except  for  a  false  accent  on  the 
word  "  Zincalo,"  which  she  discovered  later  and  apolo- 
gized for)  as  the  most  gently  tempered  descriptive 
passages.  And  yet,  to  do  her  full  justice,  much  of 
Othello's  madness  is  transcribed  in  even  measures 
also. 

Ladislaw  (in  whom  there  is,  perhaps  quite  uncon- 
sciously, a  good  deal  of  Lewes,  and  of  whom  George 
Eliot  is  very  fond)  defines  in  his  swift  way  what 
poetry  is : 

To  be  a  poet  is  to  have  a  soul  so  quick  to  discern  that 
no  shade  of  quality  escapes  it,  and  so  quick  to  feel  that 
discernment  is  but  a  hand  playing  with  finely  ordered  variety 

1  '  Life/  vol.  iii.,  p.  56. 


Her  Art  241 

on  the  chords  of  emotion  —  a  soul  in  which  knowledge 
passes  instantaneously  into  feeling,  and  feeling  flashes  back 
as  a  new  organ  of  knowledge. 

She  does  not  precisely  fulfil  this  definition  herself, 
for  her  knowledge  is  too  elaborately  painstaking  to 
pass  mstafttaneously  from  one  state  to  another.  She 
had  the  poetic  insight  to  see  what  poetry  is,  but 
not  the  perfected  gift  of  utterance  to  body  forth  its 
realization.  The  rapturous  vision  of  faith  is  absent; 
and  what  we  hardly  missed  in  the  prose  we  notice 
the  omission  of  in  the  poetry.  Compare  her  '  Jubal  * 
with  Mrs.  Browning's  '  Seraphim :  '  there  is  a  Good 
Friday  in  her  calendar,  but  no  Easter  Day.  The 
apocalyptic  flight  is  not  necessary  in  prose  fic- 
tion, but  Positivism  in  poetry  leadens  the  wings. 
The  lyrics  in  *  The  Spanish  Gypsy '  are  admirable 
imitations  of  correct  forms,  but  lack  the  inspiration 
of  the  born  lyrist. 

But  here  a  general  protest  against  the  spirit  of  much 
modern  criticism  may  perhaps  safely  be  entered. 
A  work  of  art  is  too  often  judged  by  an  arbitrarily 
assumed  standard.  The  particular  book  is  fitted  to  the 
general  rule,  and  found  wanting  or  not  wanting,  as 
the  case  may  be.  If  the  rule  is  "  Art  for  art's  sake," 
and  the  book  enforces  certain  moralities,  it  is  con- 
demned on  the  plea  that  morality  has  no  place  in 
art.  It  is  a  green-grocer's  parcel-tying  style  of 
criticism.  We  must  come  to  our  studies  without 
prejudice  if  the  result  is  to  be  chronicled  without 
malice.  A  work  of  art  is  good  or  bad,  not  because 
it  balances  the  scale  on  the  other  side  of  which  is 
laid  the  weight  of  our  theories,  but  because  it  ac- 
complishes or  fails    to   accomplish  what  it  sets  out 

16 


242  George  Eliot 

to  do.  Every  such  work  has  one  aim  —  Beauty. 
It  may  be  merely  a  physical,  an  objective,  a  ro- 
mantic beauty;  or  it  may  be  moral  beauty.  Why 
should  Handel  be  condemned  because  he  is  not 
Beethoven,  and  Strauss  because  he  is  not  Handel? 
Great  tragedians  have  essayed  with  success  such 
characters  as  Petruchio  and  Benedick.  One's  en- 
joyment of  Mr.  Irving's  Mathias  does  not  conflict 
with  the  delight  of  his  Jingle.  Now,  if  Handel 
should  compose  a  waltz,  or  Strauss  attempt  a  Ninth 
Symphony;  if  Booth  should  come  from  his  grave 
to  act  Rip,  or  if  Jefferson  should  put  on  the  inky 
cloak  of  Hamlet,  a  large  part  of  the  critical  world 
would  say  that  the  waltz  ought  to  be  left  alone  be- 
cause its  composer  had  once  written  '  The  Messiah  ; ' 
that  the  symphony  was  beneath  contempt  because 
Strauss  had  hitherto  done  nothing  but  waltz ;  that 
Booth  and  Hamlet  were  so  inextricably  mixed,  the 
one  with  the  other,  that  it  was  folly  to  ask  us  to  con- 
centrate our  attention  on  something  new;  and  as  for 
Jefferson,  well,  he  must  be  crazy.  But  that  is  not 
criticism.  There  is  no  harm  in  comparisons,  —  nay, 
they  are  inevitable.  But  the  final  question  must  be 
—  to  return  to  our  subject — not:  Is  George  Eliot  a 
failure  in  poetry  because  she  is  not  a  failure  in  prose  ; 
but.  Does  she  accomplish  her  poetical  purpose  ?  And 
for  the  same  reason,  we  do  not  say  that  George  Eliot 
should  never  have  written  '  Middlemarch,'  just  be- 
cause she  once  wrote  '  Silas  Marner.'  To  be  fair,  we 
must  judge  '  Middlemarch  '  positively,  just  as  if  '  Silas 
Marner'  had  never  been  written ;  it  stands,  as  does 
every  work  of  art,  of  itself.  It  is  more  than  unfair, 
and  it  is  ungenerous,  to  ask  for  repetitions.  When  a 
writer  like  George  Eliot  ceases  to  produce  Silas  Mar- 


Her  Art  243 

ners,  it  is  a  sign  that  she  has  passed  beyond  the  con- 
trol of  the  genius  which  guided  her  through  that 
stage  into  the  control  of  another.  She  hath  done 
what  she  could,  in  the  past.  Let  there  be  no  re- 
proach in  our  regret  that  it  is  past. 

The  chief  and  final  thing  to  ask  of  any  poem,  as  of 
any  prose  work,  is  nobility  of  thought.  In  the  long 
run  we  forget  the  imperfections  of  form  and  design, 
and  remember  only  that ;  as  we  recall  at  the  close  of 
a  day's  journey  the  beauties  of  the  landscape,  in  the 
recollection  of  which  all  sordid  feattires  fade  away. 
All  the  poets  nod  at  times,  —  not  only  Homer.  We 
forget  the  nodes  of  form  in  remembering  the  loops  of 
thought.  Ought  we  not  to  be  a  little  ashamed  of  our- 
selves? Do  we  not,  in  our  hypercritical  moods,  too 
often  place  ourselves  where  Felix  Holt's  scorn  fairly 
reaches  us? 

"  It  comes  to  the  same  thing ;  thoughts,  opinions,  knowl- 
edge, are  only  a  sensibility  to  facts  and  ideas.  If  I  under- 
stand a  geometrical  problem,  it  is  because  I  have  a  sensibility 
to  the  Way  in  which  lines  and  figures  are  related  to  each 
other ;  and  I  want  yon  to  see  that  the  creature  who  has  the 
sensibilities  that  you  call  taste,  and  not  the  sensibilities  that 
you  call  opinions,  is  simply  a  lower,  prettier  sort  of  being  — 
an  insect  that  notices  the  shaking  of  the  table,  but  never 
notices  the  thunder." 

We  spend  too  much  time  in  talking  about  the  type 
of  a  book,  and  not  enough  on  what  the  type  conveys 
to  us.  George  Eliot  may  not  be,  technically,  a  poet, 
and  she  may  not  be,  strictly  speaking,  a  prose- 
poet.  But  she  is  a  poet,  nevertheless,  in  the  broad 
sense  of  a  possession   of  susceptibilities  to    poetic 


244  George  Eliot 

emotion,  and  an  endowment  of  imaginative  creation 
in  forms  of  eloquent  beauty.  The  author  of  this  was 
a  poet: 

The  grey  day  was  dying  gloriously,  its  western  clouds 
all  broken  into  narrowing  purple  strata  before  a  wide-spread- 
ing saffron  clearness,  which  in  the  sky  had  a  monumental 
calm,  but  on  the  river,  with  its  changing  objects,  was  reflected 
as  a  luminous  movement,  the  alternate  flash  of  ripples  or 
currents,  the  sudden  glow  of  the  brown  sail,  the  passage  of 
laden  barges  from  blackness  into  color,  making  an  active 
response  to  that  brooding  glory. 

Indeed,  the  whole  character  of  Mordecai  Is  poetically 
conceived  and  wrought;  and  she  says,  In  one  of  the 
notes  she  left  in  her  commonplace  book,  that  the  time 
we  live  in  is  "  prosaic  to  one  whose  mind  takes  the 
prosaic  stand  in  contemplating  it;  "  implying  that  its 
real  poetry  may  be  sought  for,  as  It  was  by  Mordecai, 
away  from  its  sordid  meannesses.  "  Feeling  Is  energy," 
she  says ;  and  she  is  one  of  the  priestesses  of  feeling, 
discharging  her  office  through  poetic  energy, 

A  great  deal  of  '  The  Spanish  Gypsy '  will  live, 
even  though  she  did  write  poetry  "  with  her  left  hand." 
It  will  live  because  of  its  inherent  nobility  of  thought, 
or  its  pathetic  beauty,  or  its  melody,  tuned  to  nature's 
tones,  or  to  all  these  in  combination ;  such  lines,  for 
example,  as  — 

What  times  are  little  ?    To  the  sentinel 
That  hour  is  regal  when  he  mounts  on  guard. 

The  maimed  form 
Of  calmly  joyous  beauty,  marble-limbed. 
Yet  breathing  with  the  thought  that  shaped  its  lips, 
Looks  mild  reproach  from  out  its  opened  grave 


Her  Art  245 


At  creeds  of  terror;  and  the  vine-wreathed  god 

Rising,  a  stifled  question  from  the  silence, 

Fronts  the  pierced  Image  with  the  crown  of  thorns. 

But  when  they  stripped  him  of  his  ornaments 
It  was  the  bawbles  lost  their  grace,  not  he. 

The  bawbles  were  well  gone. 
He  stood  the  more  a  king  when  bared  to  man. 

I  thought  he  rose 
From  the  dark  place  of  long-imprisoned  souls 
To  say  that  Christ  had  never  come  to  them. 

I  thought  his  eyes 
Spoke  not  of  hatred  —  seemed  to  say  he  bore 
The  pain  of  those  who  never  could  be  saved. 

He  is  of  those 
Who  steal  the  keys  of  snoring  Destiny 
And  make  the  prophets  lie. 

Speech  is  but  broken  light  upon  the  depth 
Of  the  unspoken. 

Say  we  fail ! 
We  feed  the  high  tradition  of  the  world. 

The  saints  were  cowards  who  stood  by  to  see 
Christ  crucified  :  they  should  have  flung  themselves 
Upon  the  Roman  spears  and  died  in  vain, — 
The  grandest  death,  to  die  in  vain,  — for  love 
Greater  than  sways  the  forces  of  the  world. 

O  love,  you  were  my  crown.    No  other  crown 
Is  aught  but  thorns  on  my  poor  woman's  brow. 

Can  we  believe  that  the  dear  dead  are  gone  ? 
Love  in  sad  weeds  forgets  the  funeral  day, 
Opens  the  chamber  door  and  almost  smiles, — 
Then  sees  the  sunbeams  pierce  athwart  the  bed 
Where  the  pale  face  is  not. 


246  George  Eliot 

Shall  he  sing  to  you? 
Some  lay  of  afternoons,  some  ballad  strain 
Of  those  who  ached  once  but  are  sleeping  now 
Under  the  sun-warmed  flowers  ? 

Juan,  cease  thy  song. 
Our  whimpering  poesy  and  small-paced  tunes 
Have  no  more  utterance  than  the  cricket's  chirp 
For  souls  that  carry  heaven  and  hell  within. 

Now  awful  Night, 
Ancestral  mystery  of  mysteries,  came  down 
Past  all  the  generations  of  the  stars, 
And  visited  his  soul. 

He  could  not  grasp  Night's  black  blank  mystery. 
And  wear  it  for  a  spiritual  garb,  creed-proof. 

Vengeance !  She  does  but  sweep  us  with  her  skirts, — 
She  takes  large  space,  and  lies,  a  baleful  light 
Revolving  with  long  years,  sees  children's  children, 
Blights  them  in  their  prime. 

0  great  God ! 
What  am  I  but  a  miserable  brand 

Lit  by  mysterious  wrath ! 

The  deepest  hunger  of  the  faithful  heart  is  faithfulness. 

New-urged  by  pain  he  turned  away  and  went, 
Carrying  forever  with  him  what  he  fled  — 
Her  murdered  love  — her  love,  a  dear  wronged  ghost 
Facing  him  beauteous  'mid  the  throngs  of  hell. 

1  said  farewell : 
I  stepped  across  the  cracking  earth  and  knew 

'T  would  yawn  behind  me. 

And  these  lines  — 


Her  Art  247 

Two  angels  guide 
The  path  of  man,  both  aged  and  yet  young, 
As  angels  are,  ripening  through  endless  years. 
On  one  he  leans  :  some  call  her  Memory, 
And  some  Tradition ;  and  her  voice  is  sweet, 
With  deep  mysterious  accords  :  the  other, 
Floating  above,  holds  down  a  lamp  which  streams 
A  light  divine  and  searching  on  the  earth, 
Compelling  eyes  and  footsteps.     Memory  yields. 
Yet  clings  with  loving  check  and  shines  anew 
Reflecting  all  the  rays  of  that  bright  lamp 
Our  angel  Reason  holds.     We  had  not  walked 
But  for  Tradition ;  we  walk  evermore 
To  higher  paths,  by  brightening  Reason's  lamp  — 

have  always  reminded  me,  both  in  the  swing  of  the 
verse,  and  in  the  contrasts  between  two  clamorous  de- 
mands, of  the  famous  appeal  of  Ulysses : 

Time  hath,  my  lord,  a  wallet  at  his  back. 

I  protest,  then,  against  reiterated  emphasis  on  faults 
which  no  one  denies,  and  a  style  of  criticism  which 
deals  with  the  approaches  to  a  subject  rather  than 
with  the  subject  itself.  A  tyro,  for  example,  sees  the 
necessity  of  putting  comic  scenes  into  prose,  and  ap- 
preciates the  superiority  of  the  Falstaffian  revelry,  for 
this  reason  among  others,  to  the  scene  at  the  inn  where 
Juan  teases  Lopez.  '  The  Spanish  Gypsy '  is  a  narra- 
tive poem,  and  carelessly  defies  dramatic  unities  and 
historical  probabilities  for  the  sake  of  an  ethical  prin- 
ciple. It  was  not  written  for  the  stage.  We  would 
stare  at  Shakspere  writing  his  stage  directions  in 
verse,  as  a  partof  the  text;  but  we  only  smile  and  pass 
on  at  George  Eliot's — 

Enter  the  duke,  Pable,  and  Annibal, 
Exit  the  cat,  retreating  towards  the  dark. 


248  George  Eliot 

We  might  say  that  the  dramatic  end  of  the  poem  is 
the  death  of  Zarca  and  the  seizing  of  Silva  by  the  in- 
furiated Gypsies;  but  that  would  have  cut  out  the 
doxology  from  the  hymn  and  the  peroration  from  the 
sermon.  And  it  is  curious  that  the  dramatic  faults  of 
an  imperfect  dramatist  should  approximate  in  some 
respects  to  the  dramatic  faults  of  a  supreme  drama- 
tist; for  does  not  Shakspere  continue  'Hamlet'  after 
all  interest  ceases,  namely,  after  Hamlet's  death?  The 
play  ends,  dramatically,  with  Horatio's  "  Good-night, 
sweet  prince ;  "  and  the  prompt-book  so  understands 
it,  for  it  rings  down  the  curtain  before  Fortinbras 
and  other  people  we  care  nothing  about  have  a  chance 
to  distract  our  attention  from  a  stage  where  lie  the 
dead  bodies  of  the  real  actors  in  the  drama.  You  see, 
it  is  only  the  critics  who  never  transgress  the  unities. 
Is  it  not  a  pity  that  they  do  not  write  a  drama  once  in 
a  while  to  show  us  what  really  correct  form  is  like? 

It  has  been  abundantly  proved,  however,  that 
George  Eliot  has  dramatic  power  of  a  high  order. 
The  scenes  descriptive  of  the  meetings  of  Baldassare 
and  Tito  illustrate  it, —  on  the  Duomo  steps,  at  Tessa's 
hiding-place,  in  the  Rucellai  gardens,  in  the  final 
clutch  on  the  river's  bank.  I  have  quoted  the  lan- 
guage of  the  scene  describing  the  dying  glory  of  the 
afternoon  as  Deronda  approached  Blackfriars  bridge 
in  his  wherry,  as  an  example  of  her  poetical  gifts ;  it 
is  equally  indicative  of  a  dramatic  feeling  of  rare  in- 
tensity. For  all  that  brooding  splendor  is  but  the 
setting  to  a  supreme  spiritual  glory  about  to  descend, 
like  that  other,  upon  this  man.  He  lifts  his  eyes,  as 
he  fastens  the  top  button  of  his  cape,  and  sees  on  the 
bridge  — "  brought  out  by  the  western  light  into 
startling  distinctness  and  brilliance"  —  Mordecai. 


Her  Art  249 

It  was  the  face  of  Mordecai,  who  also,  in  his  watch 
towards  the  west,  had  caught  sight  of  the  advancing  boat, 
and  had  kept  it  fast  within  his  gaze,  at  first  simply  because 
it  was  advancing,  then  with  a  recovery  of  impressions  that 
made  him  quiver  as  with  a  presentiment,  till  at  last  the 
nearing  figure  lifted  up  its  face  towards  him,  —  the  face  of 
his  visions,  —  and  then  immediately,  with  white  upHfted 
hand,  beckoned  again  and  again. 

The  paths  meet;  let  the  heavens  burn.  "The  pre- 
figured friend  had  come  from  the  golden  background 
.  .  .  this  actually  was :  the  rest  was  to  be."  It  was 
no  accidental  meeting;  Mordecai  had  been  waiting 
for  it  for  five  years. 

"  But  now  look  up  the  river,"  said  Mordecai,  turning 
again  towards  it  and  speaking  in  undertones  of  what  may  be 
called  an  excited  calm,  —  so  absorbed  by  a  sense  of  fulfil- 
ment that  he  was  conscious  of  no  barrier  to  a  complete 
understanding  between  him  and  Deronda.  "  See  the  sky, 
how  it  is  slowly  fading  !  I  have  always  loved  this  bridge  : 
I  stood  on  it  when  I  was  a  little  boy.  It  is  a  meeting  place 
for  the  spiritual  messengers.  It  is  true  —  what  the  Masters 
said  —  that  each  order  of  things  has  its  angel :  that  means 
the  full  message  of  each  from  what  is  afar.  Here  I  have  lis- 
tened to  the  messages  of  earth  and  sky ;  when  I  was  stronger 
I  used  to  stay  and  watch  for  the  stars  in  the  deep  heavens. 
But  this  time,  just  about  sunset,  was  always  what  I  loved 
best.  It  has  sunk  into  me  and  dwelt  with  me  —  fading, 
slowly  fading ;  it  was  my  own  decline.  It  paused  —  it 
waited,,  till  at  last  it  brought  me  my  new  life  —  my  new  self 
—  who  will  live  when  this  breath  is  all  breathed  out." 

"  We  boldly  deny,"  says  Mr.  Jacobs  of  this  scene, 
"  we  boldly  deny  greater  tragic  intensity  to  any  inci- 
dent in  Shakspere."  ^ 

1  Macmtllan's,  vol.  xxxvi.,  p.  loi. 


250  George  Eliot 

There  is,  indeed,  a  close  psychical  kinship  between 
Shakspere  and  George  Eliot,  which  remains  after 
you  have  subtracted  the  difference  between  his  age 
and  hers.  For,  notwithstanding  the  modern  subtlety 
evident  in  the  portrayal,  her  Bulstrode  is  far  more 
Shaksperean  than  Dickens's  Pecksniff  or  Moliere's 
Tartuffe ;  because,  though  the  subtlety  be  modern,  it 
is  subtlety,  and  there  is  no  subtlety  at  all  in  those 
other  hypocrites.  But  there  is  subtlety  in  Shak- 
spere's  hypocrites,  —  in  Claudius,  for  example.  She 
is  Shaksperean,  too,  in  the  management  of  separate 
sets  of  people,  even  where  the  inter-connections  are 
slight.  It  relieves  the  mind  and  the  eye  to  see  a 
crowded  stage ;  it  withdraws  the  attention  from  a  too 
monotonous  concentration  on  the  main  theme.  Like 
a  large  historical  painting,  it  shows  the  multifarious- 
ness of  life ;  and  it  is  the  means  of  introducing  com- 
edy. It  is  as  true  of  her  as  it  is  of  Sheridan  that  her 
minor  are  as  real  as  her  major  characters.  There  are 
no  lay  figures.  To  let  one  example  stand  for  many, 
Philip  Debarry  is  as  fine  as  a  portrait  by  Lawrence. 

She  follows  the  great  master,  or  perhaps  we 
should  say  she  follows  the  sure  instinct  of  the  dram- 
atist, in  putting  relatively  slight  particular  events 
into  strong  contrast  with  the  grand  sweep  of  general 
events,  —  so  illustrating  the  apparent  littleness  of  the 
special  world  as  compared  with  the  real  bigness  of 
the  outside  world. 

While  this  poor  little  heart  was  being  bruised  with  a 
weight  too  heavy  for  it,  Nature  was  holding  on  her  calm 
inexorable  way  in  unmoved  and  terrible  beauty.  The  stars 
were  rushing  in  their  eternal  courses ;  the  tides  swelled  to 
the  level  of  the  last  expectant  weed ;  the  sun  was  making 


Her  Art  251 

brilliant  day  to  busy  nations  on  the  other  side  of  the  swift 
earth.  The  stream  of  human  thought  and  deed  was  hurry- 
ing and  broadening  onward.  The  astronomer  was  at  his 
telescope ;  the  great  ships  were  laboring  over  the  waves ; 
the  toiling  eagerness  of  commerce,  the  fierce  spirit  of  revo- 
lution, were  only  ebbing  in  brief  rest ;  and  sleepless  states- 
men were  dreading  the  possible  crisis  of  the  morrow.  What 
were  our  little  Tina  and  her  trouble  in  this  mighty  torrent, 
rushing  from  one  awful  unknown  to  another?  Lighter  than 
the  smallest  centre  of  quivering  life  in  the  water-drop,  hid- 
den and  uncared  for  as  the  pulse  of  anguish  in  the  breast 
of  the  tiniest  bird  that  has  fluttered  down  to  its  nest  with 
the  long-sought  food,  and  has  found  the  nest  torn  and 
empty. 

Mr.  TuUiver's  prompt  procedure  entailed  on  him  further 
promptitude  in  finding  the  convenient  person  who  was  de- 
sirous of  lending  five  hundred  pounds  on  bond.  "  It  must 
be  no  client  of  VVakem's,"  he  said  to  himself;  and  yet  at 
the  end  of  a  fortnight  it  turned  out  to  the  contrary,  not 
because  Mr.  TuUiver's  will  was  feeble,  but  because  external 
fact  was  stronger.  Wakem's  client  was  the  only  convenient 
person  to  be  found.  Mr.  Tulliver  had  a  destiny  as  well  as 
CEdipus,  and  in  this  case  he  might  plead,  like  OEdipus,  that 
his  deed  was  inflicted  on  him,  rather  than  committed  by 
him. 

Could  there  be  a  slenderer,  more  insignificant  thread  in 
human  history  than  this  consciousness  of  a  girl,  busy  with 
her  small  inferences  of  the  way  in  which  she  could  make 
her  life  pleasant?  —  in  a  time,  too,  when  ideas  were  with 
fresh  vigor  making  armies  of  themselves,  and  the  universal 
kinship  was  declaring  itself  fiercely ;  when  women  on  the 
other  side  of  the  world  would  not  mourn  for  the  husbands 
and  sons  who  died  bravely  in  a  common  cause,  and  men 


252  George  Eliot 

stinted  of  bread  on  our  side  of  the  world  heard  of  that 
willing  loss  and  were  patient :  a  time  when  the  soul  of  man 
was  waking  to  pulses  which  had  for  centuries  been  beating 
in  him  unheard,  until  their  full  sum  made  a  new  life  of  ter- 
ror or  of  joy. 

What  in  the  midst  of  that  mighty  drama  are  girls  and 
their  blind  visions?  They  are  the  Yea  or  Nay  of  that  good 
for  which  men  are  enduring  and  fighting.  In  these  delicate 
vessels  is  borne  onward  through  the  ages  the  treasure  of 
human  affections. 


Reference  has  been  made,  as  an  indication  of  good 
honest  art,  to  her  habit  of  hinting  at  the  outcome  of 
her  story  at  or  near  its  beginning.  The  depths  of 
Tito's  future  deceit  are  sounded  by  that  wise  fore- 
caster, Piero  di  Cosimo,  on  the  first  day  of  his  career 
in  Florence.  We  see  the  tragic  possibilities  sur- 
rounding the  Tullivers  in  the  careless,  boyish  talk  of 
Tom  and  Bob  Jakin.  Shakspere,  once  more,  plunges 
in  medias  res,  and  into  the  end  of  things,  too.  The 
tragedy  of  *  Hamlet '  hangs  on  what  Hamlet  does, 
and  what  he  does  depends  upon  what  the  Ghost 
tells  him  to  do;  so  the  Ghost  enters  Act  I.,  Scene  i. 
Finally,  she  is  Shaksperean  in  the  proximity  of  her 
tragedy  and  comedy;  sufficient  examples  of  which 
are  the  Rainbow  tavern  scene,  the  talk  at  the  Genoese 
wharf  after  Grandcourt's  death,  and  the  contrast  be- 
tween Mordecai  and  little  Jacob  Cohen.  It  is  all 
profoundly  true  to  life. 

If  her  dramas  were  more  technically  dramatic, 
they  would  lose  in  psychic  value.  They  are  for  the 
closet.  Her  contemplative  outweighed  her  dramatic 
powers  because  she  was  not  merely  a  dramatist. 


Her  Art  253 


X 

Whatever  one  may  think  of  '  Daniel  Deronda '  after 
'Adam  Bede,'  the  disappointment  is  not,  or  ought 
not  to  be,  due  to  the  transfer  of  the  scene  to  city 
life  and  the  manners  of  county  people.  A  sufficient 
hint  was  given  in  that  earlier  work  of  an  ability  to 
portray  refinement,  in  the  sketch  of  the  Irwines,  which 
should  have  prepared  all  intelligent  readers  for  its 
fuller  display  in  later  books.  George  Eliot  knew 
"  Society."  Her  observation  was  not  limited  to  the 
middle  and  artisan  classes,  nor  was  her  discriminative 
enthusiasm  kindled  only  by  her  passion  for  the  coun- 
try. She  had  also  an  intellectual  companionship  with 
the  city,  and  with  that  which  corresponded  to  it  in 
county  houses.  The  inside  history  of  some  of  the 
adverse  criticism  of  *  Daniel  Deronda '  would  make 
interesting  reading,  painful  as  it  might  be  to  those 
who  look  for  such  generous  comradeship  among  lit- 
erary folk  as  of  necessity  excludes  jealousy  at  the  in- 
vasion of  one  field  by  a  master  of  another.  Any 
reasonably  calm  view  would  lead  one  to  suppose  that 
the  skill  which  could  carve  out  an  Adam  Bede  and 
a  Silas  Marner  would  be  equally  successful  with  a 
Sir  Hugo  or  a  Mr.  Van  der  Noodt;  and  would  jus- 
tify the  expectations  that  the  art  which  is  shown  in 
devising  the  conversation  of  the  tenants  at  Arthur's 
birthday  party  would  be  just  as  much  at  home  in 
reporting  the  give-and-take  talk  of  the  upper  class 
across  Grandcourt's  mahogany.  Her  success  in  this 
department  developed  rapidly,  and  never  deterio- 
rated. Captain  Wybrow  and  Miss  Assher  are  drawn 
with  a  somewhat  uncertain  hand,  but  at  the  very  next 


254  George  Eliot 

stroke  she  rises  to  the  full  possession  of  power  in 
the  Irwines;  unlike  poor  Miss  Bronte,  whose  Ginevra 
Fanshawe  is  as  bad  as  her  Blanche  Ingram.  It  is 
another  proof  of  her  remarkable  observation  that  she 
not  only  gives  to  each  of  these  sharply  defined  ex- 
tremes its  appropriate  language,  but  shades  most 
delicately  the  difficult  differences  between  county 
manners  and  the  style  of  the  middle  class.  There 
is  no  mistaking  the  provincial  atmosphere  of  the  men 
Mr.  Brooke  had  invited  to  his  table ;  and  no  careful 
reader  would  ever  suppose  that  Mr.  Brooke  himself, 
with  all  his  commonplaceness,  belonged  to  that  set. 

XI 

Who  ever  entered  more  deeply  into  the  moods  of 
her  characters  than  George  Eliot?  At  the  'Adam 
Bede '  period  she  was  as  far  removed  from  the  reli- 
gious influences  of  her  childhood  as  she  ever  was ; 
and  yet  it  was  George  Eliot  who  drew  that  sweet 
Wesleyan  saint,  Dinah  Morris.  The  very  passion 
of  religious  outpouring  pulses  in  her  exhortations, 
and  the  pleading  in  the  prison  with  Hetty  is  a  grand 
night-wrestle  with  God.  If  there  is  a  classical  litera- 
ture of  prayer,  the  prayers  in  '  Adam  Bede '  belong 
to  it. 

The  character  of  Kalonymos,  in  *  Daniel  Deronda,' 
has  always  seemed  to  me  an  excellent  example 
of  this  sympathetic  power  of  entrance  into  mental 
attitudes  not  her  own ;  and  its  consideration  next 
to  the  paragraph  dealing  with  Dinah  will,  in  ad- 
dition, indicate  the  multifariousness  of  her  genius. 
Kalonymos  is  the  type  of  the  faithful  high-class,  but 
not  vividly  religious,  Jew ;  with  the  steady  gaze  of 


Her  Art  255 

the  fatalist,  and  taking  opinions  as  he  took  the  shapes 
of  trees;  loving  freedom,  but  not  thinking  of  his 
people's  future.  He  told  Deronda  that  when  travel- 
ling in  the  East  he  liked  to  lie  on  deck  and  watch 
the  stars :  the  sight  of  them  satisfied  him,  and  he  had 
no  further  hunger.  "  And  almost  as  soon  as  Deronda 
was  in  London,"  the  author  says  at  the  end  of  the 
interview,  "  the  aged  man  was  again  on  shipboard, 
greeting  the  friendly  stars  without  any  eager  curios- 
ity." It  is  an  effective  touch  —  that  fine  old  Kalony- 
mos  watching  his  stars,  and  it  is  quite  apart  from 
other  touches.  We  may  not  recognize  his  counter- 
part among  our  present  acquaintances,  yet  we  instinc- 
tively feel  the  truth  of  it  all ;  and  when  we  do  meet 
him  we  shall  recognize  him. 

In  a  widely  sympathetic  nature,  responsive  to  in- 
fluences from  unusual  as  well  as  customary  surround- 
ings ;  or  in  a  mental  habit  of  calm,  sane,  open-eyed, 
unemotional  receptiveness,  like  that  of  Kalonymos, 
who  takes  nature  at  her  word,  without  asking  any 
questions,  —  who  has  an  affection  rather  than  a  love 
for  nature  ;  or,  again,  in  a  fundamentally  religious 
constitution,  whose  depths  may  be  stirred  profoundly, 
but  only  by  profound  causes,  —  in  all  such  there  is  no 
dread  of  the  supernatural.  The  Kalonymos  class, 
satisfied  that  it  is  a  part  of  the  celestial  order,  would 
receive  its  manifestations  with  a  cool  enjoyment  and 
a  fearless  curiosity ;  and  with  the  other  two  a  sense 
of  wonder  and  a  feeling  of  awe  would  completely 
swamp  all  vulgar  manifestations  of  alarm.  We  cannot 
fancy  Dinah  Morris  frightened  at  a  thunder  storm. 
One  of  the  most  telling  strokes  in  the  portraiture  of 
Gwendolen  Harleth  is  the  terror  she  feels  when  the 
supernatural  touches  her.     There  is  no  depth  in  her 


256  George  Eliot 

to  correspond  with  the  depth  in  the  phenomenon; 
no  deep  answering  to  deep.  It  is  as  if  a  great  tornado 
struck  a  duck-pond,  —  its  piteous  shallowness  bared 
to  the  lightning's  flash. 

Not  only  in  the  general  symmetry  of  her  characters, 
but  in  the  tender  side-lights  she  throws  upon  their 
varying  moods  from  the  many-angled  mirror  of  her 
sympathy,  does  she  satisfy  the  anxious  expectations 
of  art.  Do  we  ever  stop  to  consider  what  the  word 
"  sympathy  "  stands  for  in  all  its  fulness?  To  cultivate 
it,  says  Ruskin,  "  you  must  be  among  living  creatures 
and  thinking  about  them ;  "  and  that  means  not  only 
an  intellectual  effort  to  comprehend  them,  but  that 
quick  understanding  of  another's  feeling  which  seems 
like  a  sudden  warm  pressure  of  the  hand — a  sympathy 
without  criticism,  almost  without  speech.  George 
Eliot  so  understood  Romola's  mood  when  she  pic- 
tured her  setting  forth  on  the  day  of  the  procession 
with  Brigida:  "  Romola  set  out  in  that  languid  state 
of  mind  with  which  every  one  enters  on  a  long  day 
of  sight-seeing  purely  for  the  sake  of  gratifying  a 
child  or  some  dear  childish  friend." 


C  — HER  SYMPATHY:    FURTHER 
CONSIDERED 


It  is  time  to  examine  a  little  more  narrowly  into 
the  texture  of  this  sympathy,  which  she  wore,  not  as 
fine  clothes  or  jewelry,  but  as  a  necessary  garment 
for  warmth. 

It  is  a  fine  thing  to  be  able  to  show  how  a  despi- 
cable character  has,  perhaps  by  some  mysterious  in- 
heritance, or  by  the  sure  working  out  of  some  hidden 
law,  a  bent  or  twist  which  circumstances  will  mould 
along  the  line  of  a  resistance  made  the  least  by  these 
conditions.  The  growth  of  Tito's  duplicity  was  like 
the  rising  tide.  He  had  borrowed  from  falsehood, 
and  he  had  to  pay  the  debt  by  further  borrowings. 
George  Eliot  makes  no  weak  apologies,  and  is  not 
one  of  those  fools  who  make  a  mock  at  sin  by  calling 
bitter  sweet  and  sweet  bitter.  She  subtly  removes 
him  more  and  more  from  her  sympathy  and  ours,  or 
rather,  let  us  say,  he  removes  himself  from  a  sympa- 
thy which  would  still  wistfully  follow  him  if  it  might; 
and  yet  without  dogmatism,  without  undue  emphasis 
or  passion,  she  makes  it  evident  that  Tito's  troubles 
come  largely  from-  an  innate  love  of  reticence.  It  was 
an  impulse,  acting  unconsciously  at  the  beginning : 
concealment  was  easy  to  him.     "  He  would  now  and 

17 


258  George  Eliot 

then  conceal  something  which  had  as  little  the  nature 
of  a  secret  as  the  fact  that  he  had  seen  a  flight  of 
crows."  It  does  not  lessen  the  despicability  of  the 
character,  viewed  objectively,  and  it  does  not  call  for 
much  waste  of  pity  viewed  subjectively  ;  but  it  does 
widen  our  sympathies  with  glimpses  into  dark  un- 
opened chambers  where  one  must  grope  blindly  to 
find  the  key  of  escape.  George  Eliot  makes  us  hate 
the  sin  for  a  long  time  before  we  begin  to  hate 
the  sinner,  so  insidious  is  this  growth  of  reticence 
into  falsehood,  and  so  subtly  does  it  blend  with  his 
pleasure-loving  nature,  which  finds  it  easier  to  lie  than 
to  bear  burdens  under  the  truth.  He  is  a  lovable 
fellow,  even  after  he  has  begun  to  deceive,  and  we  are 
kept  hoping  that  he  will  find  the  courage  to  retrace 
his  steps.  Such  good  looks,  such  pleasant  manners, 
such  winning  address,  such  sweet  amiability  —  surely 
Apollo  will  not  turn  into  an  evil  god !  But  the 
canker  grows  and  grows,  until  in  one  of  those  grand 
climacteric  moments  which  carry  within  them  all  the 
mockery  of  the  past  and  all  the  tragedy  of  the  future, 
he  stands  before  Romola,  not  in  the  fair  Grecian  shape 
which  won  her,  but  "in  his  loathsome^  beauty,"  his 
attractiveness,  her  curse. 

Of  all  hopeless  cases  of  sympathy  one  would  say 
the  case  of  the  miser  was  the  most  hopeless.  Yet  no 
one  can  ever  read  '  Silas  Marner'  without  thinking 
that  perhaps  there  are  extenuating  circumstanes  for 
all  the  other  misers  also.  And  what  is  there  accom- 
plished in  an  idyll  is  more  laboriously  traced  forth  in 
the  complicated  history  of  Mr.  Bulstrode.     The  piti- 

1  "  Twenty  letters  of  twenty  pages  do  not  display  a  character," 
says  Taine,  in  his  chapter  on  Richardson,  "but  one  sharp  word 
does." 


Her  Sympathy  259 

ableness  of  his  position  is  allowed  to  disturb  the 
security  of  our  scorn  only  so  far  as  a  sympathetic 
analysis  of  his  temperamental  peculiarities  tempers 
our  desire  to  see  the  heaviest  punishment  inflicted. 
The  dangerous  doctrine  is  not  taught  that  a  man  is 
not  to  be  held  responsible  for  the  unforeseen  conse- 
quences of  his  actions ;  what  is  enforced  is  the  diffi- 
culty of  deciding  how  far  he  is  to  be  held  responsible. 
The  honest  force  of  righteous  indignation  is  nowhere 
minimized  in  George  Eliot's  work,  but  is,  on  the  con- 
trary, applauded  ;  and  yet  there  is  a  gentle  insistence 
of  "  Judge  not,"  because  there  may  be  some  hidden 
fact  which  if  known  would  alter  the  judgment.  The 
glory  of  such  magnanimity  shines  the  more  steadfastly 
in  that  while  it  is  easy  to  find  excuses  for  vices  akin 
to  our  own,  and  for  such  as  are  somewhat  loosely 
classed  as  "  amiable,"  it  requires  sympathy  of  an 
heroic  fibre  to  shadow  forth  natural  causes  for  un- 
natural vices,  and  to  attempt  an  understanding  of  one 
spiritually  one's  opposite.  As  George  Eliot  is,  of  all 
novelists,  the  most  strenuous  in  emphasizing  the 
beauty  of  altruism,  it  would  be  natural  to  expect  a 
coldness  of  feeling  towards  the  unloveliness  of  egoism. 
But  it  is  a  part  of  her  reverent  attitude  towards  this 
same  Social  Good  that  she  should  be  eminently 
just  to  all,  —  including  therefore  those  opposed  to  the 
Social  Good  :  hence  her  sympathy  with  those  most 
naturally  repugnant  to  her  sympathy.  I  do  not 
know  of  such  a  mental  attitude,  proceeding  from 
such  a  moral  purpose,  in  any  other  novelist.^ 

1  The  fairness  resulting  from  an  honest,  intelligent  sympathy  is 
clearly  illustrated  in  her  defence  of  Byron  against  the  pietistic  cant 
of  Gumming.  In  her  essay  against  that  preacher's  doctrines  she 
repudiates  with  noble  scorn  the  charge  that  Byron's  "  dying  moments  " 


26o  George  Eliot 

Thus  she  makes  it  apparent  that  Mr.  Bulstrode's 
way  of  explaining  dispensations  would  have  been 
deceitful  only  to  an  idealized  self,  —  that  is,  to  a  self 
freed  from  egoistic  fetters :  in  view  of  those  fetters, 
it  was  a  genuine  method  because  egoism  does  not 
affect  the  sincerity  of  beliefs  :  "  rather,  the  more  our 
egoism  is  satisfied,  the  more  robust  is  our  belief." 
He  is  wrapped  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  doctrine  which 
admits  of  the  view  that  the  depth  of  a  particular  sin 
is  "  but  a  measure  for  the  depth  of  forgiveness."  If 
sin  is  egoism,  in  the  bad  sense  and  with  all  that  may 
logically  flow  from  its  uncontrolled  possession  of  a 
man,  a  religious  system  which  may  be  twisted  into  a 
feeder  for  this  egoism  is  to  be  taken  into  considera- 
tion. Mr.  Bulstrode  was  in  the  grasp  of  such  a  sys- 
tem. He  was  a  hypocrite,  yes,  but  it  was  a  doctrinal 
hypocrisy ;  and  that  is  of  a  kind  that  can  only  be 
understood,  and  then  only  partially,  by  an  under- 
standing of  the  doctrine.  The  "outer"  conscience, 
with  its  concrete  warnings,  is  likely  to  be  swallowed 
up  in  the  "  inner "  conscience  of  abstract  formulas: 
bad  deeds  are  excused  by  a  "  sense  of  pardon." 
George  Eliot  does  not  mean  to  say  that  doctrines  are 
responsible  for  sins.  A  man  may  use  his  religion  for 
a  cloak  of  maliciousness.  But  she  delicately  shows 
how  "  mixed "  the  sinner's  motives  are  likely  to  be 
when  the  sinner  is  a  certain  kind  of  a  "  professing 
Christian." 

were  spent  in  writing  a  certain  recklessly  hopeless  poem ;  rejoicing 
that,  on  the  contrary,  the  poet's  "unhappy  career  was  ennobled  and 
purified  towards  its  close  by  a  high  and  sympathetic  purpose,  by 
honest  and  energetic  efforts  for  his  fellow-men."  Yet  by  turning  to 
the  passage  referred  to  in  the  footnote  to  p.  196,  it  will  be  seen  that 
this  generous  tribute  is  in  the  face  of  a  general  and  fundamental 
dislike  of  Lord  Byron's  character. 


Her  Sympathy  261 

Nor  does  she  make  Bulstrode  wish  to  continue  in 
sin  that  grace  may  abound.  He  would  have  echoed 
St.  Paul's  "God  forbid!"  to  that;  and  yet  that  is 
what  he  actually  did.  He  used  his  wealth  —  such, 
for  instance,  as  he  got  through  investments  in  the 
dyes  which  rotted  Mr.  Vincy's  silk  — for  the  exaltation 
of  God's  cause;  "  which  was  something  distinct  from 
his  own  rectitude  of  conduct."  Vincy  was,  in  Bul- 
strode's  view,  one  of  God's  enemies,  in  that  he  was  a 
worldly  man:  he  was  to  be  used,  therefore,  as  an 
instrument  in  Mr.  Bulstrode's  hands  for  the  glory  of 
God,  through  wealth  wrung  from  Vincy,  who  would 
not  have  used  it  for  God's  glory. 

Mr.  Bulstrode  had  from  the  first  moments  of  shrink- 
ing, but  they  were  private,  and  took  the  form  of 
prayer.  "  Thou  knowest  how  loose  my  soul  sits  from 
these  things  —  how  I  view  them  all  as  implements 
for  tilling  Thy  garden  rescued  here  and  there  from 
the  wilderness."  It  was  easy  for  him  to  settle  what 
was  due  from  him  to  others  by  inquiring  what  was 
God's  intention  in  regard  to  himself.  He  was  not  a 
coarse  hypocrite.  "  He  was  simply  a  man  whose 
desires  had  been  stronger  than  his  theoretic  beliefs, 
and  who  had  gradually  explained  the  gratification  of 
his  desires  into  satisfactory  agreement  with  those 
beliefs." 

But,  that  we  may  not  charge  his  hypocrisy  against 
his  "  Evangelical "  creed,  in  the  flattering  belief  that  our 
own  creed,  for  example,  if  it  does  not  happen  to  be 
"  Evangelical,"  would  have  saved  him,  George  Eliot 
points  out,  with  her  wide-eyed  sanity  of  vision,  that 
we  are  all  occasional  hypocrites  of  this  sort,  and  that 
Bulstrode's  implicit  reasoning  is  not  peculiar  to  his 
sect.     "  There  is  no  general  doctrine  which  is  not 


262  George  Eliot 

capable  of  eating  out  our  morality  if  unchecked  by 
the  deep-seated  habit  of  direct  fellow-feeling  with 
individual  fellow-men." 

The  two  night  scenes  with  Raffles  are  a  most  mar- 
vellous revelation  of  insight  into  the  motive  force  of 
this  subconsciousness  of  desire  warping  the  soul  from 
its  true  course.  Bulstrode  was  bound  by  conscience 
to  obey  Lydgate's  behest  not  to  give  his  patient 
liquors  of  any  sort.  All  through  the  first  night  his 
prayers  for  Raffles  are  colored  by  wishes  which  can 
only  be  accomplished  by  Raffles's  death.  Then  the 
apologies  for  those  wishes:  Who  was  Raffles?  Why 
should  such  a  useless,  miserable  creature  live  to 
torture  him,  Bulstrode,  God's  servant,  and  wreck  all 
his  plans  for  God's  glory?  Ah,  yes,  but  it  was  dread- 
ful to  think  of  his  dying  so  impenitent.  Well,  were 
not  public  criminals  impenitent,  and  did  they  not 
have  to  die?  If  Providence  should  award  death  to 
this  private  criminal,  as  the  law  did  with  the  public 
criminals,  surely  there  was  no  sin  in  contemplating  it 
as  desirable.  Lydgate  might  have  made  a  mistake. 
He  was  human.  None  of  the  other  doctors  in  Middle- 
march  would  have  prescribed  in  that  way.  Perhaps 
the  opposite  course  of  treatment  was  the  correct  one. 
No,  no.  He  will  obey  Lydgate's  orders.  He  will 
separate  his  intentions  from  his  desires.  But  if  the 
orders  are  not  valid  ?     Piteous,  piteous  conflict ! 

Then  the  day  comes,  and  with  it  Lydgate.  Raffles 
is  pronounced  worse.  Lydgate  prescribes  opium  in 
case  of  prolonged  sleeplessness,  and  is  most  minute 
in  his  directions  as  to  the  point  at  which  the  doses 
should  cease.  He  also  reiterates  his  orders  against 
alcohol.  The  next  night  —  the  fatal  night  —  arrives. 
Bulstrode  is  too  weary  for  further  watching,  and  turns 


Her  Sympathy  263 

the  case  over  to  the  housekeeper ;  but  forgets  to  tell 
her  when  the  doses  of  opium  must  cease.  An  hour 
and  a  half  elapses.  He  starts  to  make  good  the 
omission  —  and  stops.  Perhaps  she  has  already- 
given  him  too  much.  He  hesitates  a  long  time. 
Raffles  can  be  heard  moaning  and  murmuring.  As 
there  was  still  no  sleep,  perhaps  Lydgate's  prescrip- 
tion had  best  be  disobeyed.  He  turns  away  from  the 
sick  man's  room.  Presently  Mrs.  Abel  raps  at  his 
door.  Cannot  she  give  the  poor  sinking  creature 
some  brandy?  Bulstrode  does  not  answer;  the 
struggle  is  going  on  within  him.  Mrs.  Abel,  who 
knows  nothing  of  Lydgate's  prohibition,  pleads 
strongly  for  the  stimulant.  Still  silence.  "  It 's  not 
a  time  to  spare  when  people  are  at  death's  door," 
cries  Mrs.  Abel,  in  her  ignorant  pity.  He  gives  her 
the  key  of  the  wine-cooler.  ...  At  six  o'clock  he 
rises  and  spends  some  time  in  prayer.  He  visits 
Raffles,  and  finds  him  in  his  last  agony.  He  hides 
the  almost  empty  opium  phial  and  the  brandy  bottle ; 
and  Lydgate,  on  his  arrival,  is  forced  to  the  con- 
clusion that  his  treatment  was  a  mistake.  That  is  all. 
It  was  virtually  murder;  the  diseased  motive  acting 
"  like  an  irritating  agent  in  his  blood." 

II 

A  book  full  of  human  nature  must  be  more  or  less 
full  of  human  sin.  We  know  George  Eliot's  defini- 
tion of  sin,  and  we  know  why  she  deals  with  it,  and 
how.  She  widens  the  scope  of  morality  in  fiction, 
by  extending  the  word  "  sin  "  to  sortiething  beyond 
the  infraction  of  one  of  the  commandments,  as  if  no 
grief  could  ever  flow  from    less  evident  aspects  of 


264  George  Eliot 

wrong-doing.  It  is  not  difficult  to  fancy  how  George 
Sand  would  have  dealt  with  Maggie  and  Stephen, 
Our  sympathies  are  much  more  subtly  moved,  how- 
ever, by  the  picture  of  Maggie,  not  sinning  in  a  way 
which  would  indicate,  among  other  things,  a  vulgar 
lack  of  inventive  imagination  on  the  part  of  the 
author,  but  undergoing  self-imposed  expiation  for  an 
injustice  done  another  in  thought,  not  deed,  —  an 
expiation  made  sublime  by  the  fact  that  it  involves  a 
public  condemnation  such  as  would  have  been  called 
forth  by  the  sin  of  deed ;  Maggie's  public  having 
every  reason  to  suppose  that  the  sin  of  deed  had 
been  committed. 

Perhaps  her  intense  sympathy  does  lead  her  into 
an  occasional  weakness.  Her  tenderness  in  the  treat- 
ment of  folly  grows,  like  other  used  faculties,  and  a 
little  out  of  proportion,  now  and  then,  to  the  other 
faculties. 

"  Continual  harvest  wears  the  fruitful  field." 

In  one  of  her  poetical  headings  she  says: 

**  Pity  the  laden  one:  this  wandering  woe 
May  visit  you  or  me ;  " 

and  she  extends  her  pity  to  the  woe-causer.  She  is 
as  sorry  for  Tryan  as  for  Tryan's  victim.  Mr.  Irwine, 
it  seems  to  us,  is  almost  too  pitiful  for  Arthur.  Arthur 
is  more  favorably  considered  than  Anthony  in  '  Mr. 
Gilfil,'  and  yet  he  is  of  the  same  stripe.  The  Poysers, 
one  feels,  ought  really  to  have  left  the  neighborhood, 
as  they  wished  to  do,  to  make  the  Nemesis  complete. 
But  then,  as  we  have  seen,  her  Nemesis  has  so7ne  heal- 
ing in  her  wings.  It  is  a  deep  question,  and  it  may 
be  that  she  errs  on  the  safe  side. 


Her  Sympathy  265 

The  treatment  of  Dorothea  is  clearly  an  indication, 
however,  of  a  faculty  used  to  excess,  for  the  reader 
fails  to  give  his  sympathy  into  the  keeping  of  the 
author's ;  which,  when  the  reader  is  in  general  sym- 
pathy with  the  author, —  when  he  is  a  sympathetic 
reader,  in  short,  —  suggests,  at  least,  a  false  note  some- 
where. The  character  is  built  on  a  sure  foundation; 
namely,  the  lack  of  complete  ideality  in  woman;  but 
the  superstructure  is  not  convincingly  true.  "  All 
Dorothea's  passion  was  transferred  through  a  mind 
struggling  toward  an  ideal  life ;  the  radiance  of  her 
transfigured  girlhood  fell  on  the  first  object  that  came 
within  its  level."  Exactly ;  but  was  Casaubon  within 
the  level  of  any  such  girl  as  Dorothea?  His  letter 
of  proposal  is  nothing  more  than  a  bid  for  an  amanu- 
ensis. Can  it  be  supposed  that  a  girl  like  that  would 
not  see  through  such  language,  —  would  not  feel  in- 
sulted by  the  suggestion  that  their  introduction  came 
at  a  moment  when  he  most  needed  help  for  the  com- 
pletion of  a  life's  plan?  He  is  proposing  marriage 
to  her,  but  he  is  thinking  of  himself  and  his  book  on 
fish  deities  and  things.  The  "meanness  of  opportu- 
nity "  is  what  galled  Dorothea,  but  that  is  a  kind  of 
meanness  felt  by  all  whose  ideals  are  higher  than  their 
surroundings ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  any 
genuine  girl  regarding  that  semi-petrified  mummy  as 
in  any  way  a  realization  of  an  ideal. 

In  the  concluding  chapter  of  the  story,  Dorothea  is 
pictured  as  living  happily  with  Ladislaw,  and  yet  the 
general  opinion  seems  to  be  that,  spiritually,  her  mar- 
riage with  that  attractive  Bohemian  was  her  second 
mistake.  The  author  acknowledges  that  it  was  not 
ideally  beautiful.  And  she  maintains  that  her  first 
mistake  could  not  have  happened  if  "  Society  "  had 


266  George  Eliot 

not  smiled  on  such  propositions.  But  Dorothea's 
society  did  not  smile  on  it.  Brooke  said  all  he  could 
for  Chettam,  although  what  Brooke  said  on  any  subject 
was  not  much  to  the  purpose,  and  she  would  not  have 
had  Chettam,  no  matter  who  had  spoken  for  him.  Her 
sister  is  filled  with  horror  at  the  thought  of  the  mar- 
riage. She  has  been  ridiculing  Casaubon  before 
Dorothea,  unconscious  of  her  engagement;  and  when 
that  is  announced  she  is  awed  with  a  sense  of  doom. 
"  There  was  something  funereal  in  the  whole  affair, 
and  Mr.  Casaubon  seemed  to  be  the  officiating  clergy- 
man, about  whom  it  would  be  indecent  to  make  re- 
marks." When  Chettam  hears  of  the  engagement 
he  exclaims  —  as  do  all  of  us  —  "Good  God!  It  is 
horrible  !  "  Mrs.  Cadwallader's  view  is  that  the  great 
soul  which  Dorothea  has  discovered  in  Casaubon  is 
really  a  great  bladder  for  dried  peas  to  rattle  in ;  and 
as  for  Mr.  Cadwallader,  why  should  he  interfere?  It 
was  surely  none  of  his  business.  George  Eliot's 
horses  have  run  away  with  her,  for  once.  In  the  first 
place,  Casaubon  is  too  evident  a  bag-of-bones  to  win 
the  warm  esteem  of  any  Dorothea;  and  in  the  second 
place,  Dorothea's  story  closes  in  great  happiness,  not- 
withstanding the  author's  intention  to  make  it  plain 
that  it  ought  not  to,  in  the  light  of  ideal  longings.  It 
is  a  double  failure,  —  the  result  of  an  overworked 
sympathy. 

Ill 

Her  extensive  feeling  is  shown  by  her  frequent  use 
of  the  word  'poor':  it  is  *  poor  Tom,'  'poor  Rosa- 
mond,' 'poor  Mr.  Casaubon,'  where  we  think  of  the 
adjective  as  primarily  applicable  in  a  very  different 


Her  Sympathy  267 

sense.  But  this,  again,  may  be  the  non-possession  in 
us  of  that  wide  horizon  of  hers.  At  least,  she  does  not 
allow  us  to  have  any  gross  misconceptions  as  to  the 
cause  of  sin  ;  being  careful  to  point  out,  for  example, 
that  Stephen's  fault  was  not  hypocrisy,  but  something 
much  more  subtle.  "  For  my  part,  I  am  very  sorry 
for  him,"  she  says  of  Casaubon ;  and  for  her  reason 
she  gives  us  a  picture  of  a  scholarly  scrupulousness 
made  egoistic  by  an  absence  of  emotion,  a  denial  of 
inspiration,  and  a  total  lack  of  humor.  Why  should 
we  not  pity  him,  too,  —  this  pallid  Casaubon  —  a  little 
—  just  a  little  —  bit?  What  she  really  thought  of 
Casaubon's  magnum  opus  is  expressed  in  Dorothea's 
revolt  and  Ladislaw's  contempt ;  and  in  another  book 
as  follows :  "  the  heaping  of  cat-mummies  and  the  ex- 
pensive cult  of  enshrined  putrefactions."  Yet  her  own 
sense  of  humor  inspires  her  to  discern,  even  in  her- 
self, the  minor  shades  of  faults  which  in  their  unshaded 
intensity  glare  in  him.  She  is  not  tainted  with  the 
common  error  of  confusing  sympathy  with  respect. 
She  has  no  respect  for  Casaubon's  work,  as  such, 
but  much  sympathy  with  him  in  the  light  of  his  en- 
vironment. '•  I  have  some  feeling  for  Dr.  Sprague," 
she  says.  "  One's  self-satisfaction  is  an  untaxed 
kind  of  property  which  it  is  very  unpleasant  to  find 
depreciated." 

Sympathy  tempers  the  judgment,  and  the  chief 
intellectual  result  is  fairness.  Savonarola's  refusal  to 
interfere  with  the  execution  of  Bernardo  was  a  par- 
ticularly heinous  offence  in  George  Eliot's  eyes,  and 
her  great  fairness  is  nowhere  better  shown  than  in  her 
continued  sympathy  with  the  friar  after  that  downfall 
in  her  esteem.  It  is  only  the  Grandcourts  she  cannot 
help  with  her  compassion,  and  that  through  no  fault 


268  George  Eliot 

of  hers,  —  them  and  the  "  moral  swindlers  "  she  fulmi- 
nates against  in  '  Theophrastus  ; '  and  even  those  we 
can  fancy  brought  within  the  range  of  her  painstaking 
thought  when  placed  in  the  artistic  setting  of  fiction. 
Mr.  Hutton  says  of  Rosamond  Vincy:  "This  ex- 
quisitely painted  figure  is  the  deadliest  blow  at  the 
commonplace  assumption  that  limitation  in  both  heart 
and  brain  is  a  desirable  thing  for  women  that  has  ever 
been  struck."  ^  And  the  education  of  a  young  lady  in 
her  day  (has  it  changed  so  very  much  since,  in  our 
fashionable  "seminaries"?)  encouraged  such  limita- 
tions. Like  the  rest  of  us,  Rosamond  is  partially  the 
product  of  her  environment.  The  woman  who  could 
break  Lydgate's  heart  could  nevertheless  be  the  flower 
of  Mrs.  Lemon's  school,  "  where  the  teaching  included 
all  that  was  demanded  in  the  accomplished  female, 
even  to  extras,  such  as  the  getting  in  and  out  of  a 
carriage."  "  Propriety  "  was  her  bugaboo,  and  Mrs. 
Lemon  taught  it  as  earnestly  as  Arnold  taught  Latin 
and  Greek.  Taste  she  was  mistress  of,  and  there  her 
powers  ceased.  She  is  the  kind  of  young  lady  who 
smiles  little  in  society,  because  the  smile  reveals 
dimples  which  she  thinks  unbecoming ;  who  is  ashamed 
of  her  good  mother's  use  of  such  words  as  "  tetchy  " 
and  "  pick ; "  who  feels  that  she  might  have  been 
happier  if  she  had  not  been  the  daughter  of  a  Middle- 
march  manufacturer;  and  who  is  hit  off  to  a  nicety 
by  her  brother  Fred,  who  tells  her  that  the  word 
"  disagreeable  "  does  not  describe  the  smell  of  grilled 
bone  to  which  she  objects,  but  a  sensation  in  her 
"  little  nose  associated  with  certain  finicking  notions 
which  are  the  classics  of  Mrs.  Lemon's  school."     So 

1  '  Essays  on  Some  of  the  Modem  Guides  of  English  Thought  in 
Matters  of  Faith,'  by  Richard  Holt  Hutton.  Macmillan,  London,  1887. 


Her  Sympathy  269 

Rosamond,  too,  is  taken  into  the  broad  bosom  of 
George  Eliot's  sympathy,  and  we  are  made  to  see 
that  a  lamentable  deficiency  in  the  educational  sys- 
tem must  be  fairly  weighed  as  important  evidence 
in  the  final  judgment  of  a  character  whose  native 
narrowness  could  only  be  removed  by  an  altogether 
different  system.  Mrs.  Lemon  and  the  general  ar- 
rangement of  things  which  permits  Mrs.  Lemon  to 
exist  are  partially  responsible.  Not  all  our  pity  must 
go  to  Lydgate. 

IV 

If  George  Eliot  asks  us  to  enter  with  her  into  a 
sympathetic  understanding  of  the  mental  conditions 
of  people  who  are  neither  her  favorites  nor  ours,  and 
who  stand  in  the  way  of  the  happiness  of  the  favor- 
ites, she  does  not,  on  the  other  hand,  fail  to  point  out 
the  faults  in  those  favorites  which  help  to  make  the 
unhappiness  possible.  She  has  not,  it  is  true,  the 
modern  trick  of  disparaging  the  personal  appearance 
of  her  heroes  and  heroines,  and  she  does  not  depre- 
cate their  "  irregular  features,"  nor  apologize  for  their 
lack  of  beauty.  She  is  sufficiently  in  love  with  her 
Esthers  and  Romolas  and  Dorotheas  to  think  them 
beautiful,  and  to  make  us  think  so,  too.  She  is 
chiefly  occupied,  however,  with  the  more  important 
business  of  illustrating  their  moral  shortcomings;  and 
they  are  ethical,  rather  than  aesthetic  heroines. 

Thus  Lydgate,  of  whom,  I  think,  George  Eliot  is 
the  most  fond  of  all  her  heroes,  has  a  fundamental 
fault, —  a  flaw  in  a  base  otherwise  nobly  strong,  and 
which  causes  the  downfall  of  the  statue.  If  he  had  only 
married  Dorothea !     IF  :  precisely :  the  whole  tragedy 


270  George  Eliot 

of  the  universe  is  held  in  that  one  little  word.     There  is 
just   a   thread    of   coarseness    in    Lydgate's   attitude 
towards  women, —  a  thread  as   common  to  men  of 
intellect  and  chivalry  as  a  still  coarser  fibre  is  to  men 
of  lower  grade ;  it  is  the  tendency  to  exalt  mere  out- 
ward grace  to  a  pinnacle  the  rarified  atmosphere  of 
which  only  grace  of  the  inward  and  spiritual  sort  can 
bear.     Lydgate,  with  all  his  cleverness  and  worth,  is 
not  capable  of  gauging  such  a  character  as  Dorothea's ; 
although  Ladislaw,  who  has  been  quite  an  unnecessary 
grief  to  Dorothea's  admirers  (for  he  is  really  a  fine 
fellow),  has  the  essential  necromancy  which  Lydgate, 
his  superior  in  most  things,  lacks.     He  is  afraid  of 
Dorothea :  "  a  little  too  earnest,"  he  thinks.     "  It  is 
troublesome  to  talk  to  such  women.     They  are  always 
wanting  reasons,  yet  they  are  too  ignorant  to  under- 
stand the  merits  of  any  question,  and  usually  fall  back 
on  their  moral  sense  to  settle  things  after  their  own 
taste."     But  of  Rosamond  he  thinks :  "  She  is  grace 
itself;  she  is  perfectly  lovely  and  accomplished.    That 
is  what  a  woman  ought  to  be :  she  ought  to  produce 
the  effect  of  beautiful  music."     "  Notwithstanding  her 
undeniable  beauty,"  Miss  Brooke  is  found  wanting  in 
that  she  does  not  fill  his  idea  of  adornment,  which,  to 
his  notion,  is  the  first  necessary  qualification  in  a  wife. 
She  did  not  possess  the  "  melodic  charm  "  for  him  that 
the  other  woman  did.  "  She  did  not  look  at  things  from 
the   proper  feminine    angle.     The    society   of    such 
women   was   about  as  relaxing  as  going  from  your 
work  to  teach  the  second  form,  instead  of  reclining 
in  a  paradise  with  sweet  laughs  for  bird-notes,  and 
blue  eyes  for  a  heaven."     So,  although  his  point  of 
view  is  far  from  being  the  same  as  Mr.  Chichely's, 
what  he  sees  is  not  dissimilar ;  that  coursing  gentle- 


Her  Sympathy  271 

man  confessing,  "  Between  ourselves,  the  mayor's 
daughter  is  more  to  my  taste  than  Miss  Brooke." 
And  thus  Lydgate  got  his  bird-notes  and  his  blue 
eyes, —  got  them  with  a  vengeance  ;  and  the  paradise 
that  he  reclined  in  was  the  chair  he  flung  himself  into 
that  day  when  the  Quallingham  letter  came;  check- 
mated by  the  utter  insensibility  to  all  true  values  of 
that  "perfectly  lovely  and  accomplished"  product 
of  Mrs.  Lemon's  fashionable  school.  This  masculine 
vice  (which  takes  hold  of  the  Lydgates  as  well  as  the 
Chichelys)  of  blindness  to  psychical,  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  physical,  grace,  and  which  deceived  this 
particular  Lydgate  into  thinking  the  physical  was  but 
the  outward  and  visible  part  of  something  lovely  in- 
ward and  spiritual,  was  the  cause  of  his  wasted  energy 
and  the  wreck  of  his  noble  ambitions.  "  This  is  what 
I  am  thinking  of;  and  that  is  what  I  might  have  been 
thinking  of."  And  the  man  who  had  dreamed  of 
discoveries  which  would  have  revolutionized  medical 
treatment  finally  writes  a  treatise  on  gout  —  of  all 
things  in  the  world  —  and  calls  his  wife  his  basil 
plant, —  "  a  plant  which  had  once  flourished  wonder- 
fully on  a  murdered  man's  brains." 

What  has  been  said  about  George  Eliot's  percep- 
tive qualities,  joined  to  what  has  been  said  about  her 
conscientious  avoidance  of  generalities,  is  perhaps  the 
sufficient  evidence  of  a  peculiarly  logical  order  of 
mind  in  which  synthesis  follows  in  beautiful  sequence 
upon  analysis.  First  of  all,  she  observed,  —  she  gave 
a  close  attention  to  the  things  she  was  to  write  about ; 
and  observation  "  is  the  great  instrument  of  discovery 
in  mind  and  matter  "  because  it  is  the  instrument  of 
the  analytical  method.  The  percept,  let  us  say,  is 
Tom  TuUiver.     Like   all    other   objects,   he   stands 


272  George  Eliot 

before  us  in  a  complex  state.  How  can  we  best 
understand  what  is  simple  in  Tom,  resolve  him  from 
his  complexities  into  his  elements?  We  must  sepa- 
rate him  from  the  other  characters,  —  from  Mr,  Riley 
among  the  others.  Mr.  Riley  enters  Tom's  life  at  a 
very  important  period,  being  called  in  by  Mr.  Tulliver 
for  advice  concerning  Tom's  schooling.  He  recom- 
mends Mr.  Stelling,  without  a  sufficient  knowledge 
of  his  acquirements.  Stelling  was  the  son-in-law  of 
Timpson,  and  Riley  was  kindly  disposed  towards 
Timpson.  He  did  not  know  of  any  other  school- 
master whom  he  had  any  ground  for  recommending 
in  preference  to  Stelling;  why,  then,  should  he  not 
recommend  Stelling?  It  is  chilling  to  have  no 
opinion  when  your  opinion  is  asked ;  and  if  you  are 
to  give  it  at  all,  it  is  stupid  not  to  give  it  with  an  air 
of  conviction.  Riley  knows  no  harm  of  Stelling.  He 
wishes  him  well,  especially  as  he  is  the  son-in-law  of 
Timpson.  He  recommends  him,  therefore,  and  then 
he  "  begins  to  think  with  admiration  of  a  man  recom- 
mended on  such  high  authority."  There  was  no  plot 
for  self-interest  in  the  advice.  The  idea  of  pleasing 
Timpson  by  serving  Stelling  was  one  of  those  "  little 
dim  ideas  and  complacencies "  which  enter  without 
forethought  into  a  brain  stimulated  by  a  snug  open 
fire  and  such  open-handed  hospitality  as  Mr.  Tulliver 
was  famous  for.  His  "immovability  of  face,  and  the 
habit  of  taking  a  pinch  of  snuff  before  he  gave  an 
answer  made  him  trebly  oracular  to  Mr.  Tulliver." 
On  this  highly  imperfect  evidence,  poor  Tom  (we 
cannot  avoid  the  "poor,"  after  all)  is  subjected  to  a 
treatment  of  instruction  resulting  only  in  unhappiness 
and  heaviness  of  spirit,  and  Mr.  Tulliver  is  made  to 
sacrifice  money  he  ought  to   save. 


Her  Sympathy  273 

It  is,  in  itself,  a  most  subtle  analysis  of  Mr.  Riley's 
mental  attitude,  but  it  is  here  introduced  to  illustrate 
the  author's  method  of  separating  the  influence  of  the 
environment  in  order  to  show  what  this  particular 
Tom  might  have  been  with  Mr.  Riley  eliminated. 
Hence  our  sympathy  with  Tom  —  a  spiritually  hard 
and  unyielding  character,  but  demanding  pity,  never- 
theless, as  well  as  Maggie.  The  author  says,  as  it 
were :  Put  yourself  and  all  your  friends  in  Tom's 
place,  and  the  result  would  be  the  same. 

Like  all  creators,  she  must  be  more  than  an  analyst, 
or  she  would  be  no  more  than  a  scientist,  and  an  in- 
complete one  at  that.  On  the  contrary,  we  have  a 
system  in  George  Eliot,  because  her  synthesis  is 
founded  upon  her  analysis.  Art  is  constructive,  and 
construction  is  essentially  synthetic.  While  laws  are 
the  result  of  discovered  facts,  the  artist  derives  sub- 
sequent facts  from  the  laws,  which  is  deduction, — 
the  process  of  synthesis.  It  is  an  axiom  of  philosophy 
that  the  analysis  must  be  exact,  else  the  synthesis  will 
not  be  legitimate.  We  have  seen  how  exact  her  an- 
alysis is.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  such  a  thing  as  pure 
imagination,  which  is  synthesis  without  analysis ;  but 
George  Eliot's  imagination,  like  Wordsworth's  and 
Dante's,  is  not  of  that  order.  Her  deduction  was 
based  on  induction,  her  synthesis  on  a  precedent  an- 
alysis, because  of  her  sympathy  with  her  subject.  There 
are  certain  known  characteristics  of  Lydgate  and 
Rosamond,  and  the  artist's  business  is  to  show  us  the 
tragic  facts  resulting  from  these  clashing  laws  of 
character.  By  tracing  the  motive  to  its  source,  she 
forces  upon  us  an  attitude  of  judicial  fairness.  It  is 
a  noble  thing  to  be  fair-minded.  We  ought  not  to 
blame  a  stream  for  its  muddiness.     Perhaps  there  is 

iS 


274  George  Eliot 

a  mud  spring  that  is  responsible.  And  then  what 
caused  the  spring  to  be  muddy?  Tom  Tulliver  as 
we  know  him  is  the  joint  result  of  the  different  ten- 
dencies acting  upon  him  and  in  him.  The  tendencies 
have  been  decomposed,  and  a  general  principle  has 
evolved.  He  is  studied  in  the  light  of  the  principle, 
and  we  have  the  special  case.  One  must  be  a  logician 
to  do  it  rightly,  and  one  must  be  a  poet  to  do  it  wisely. 

The  delineation  of  Machiavelli,  in  '  Romola,'  is  a 
good  illustration  of  this  mental  process.  George 
Eliot  was  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  works  of  the 
Italian  in  the  original,  which  is  a  different  sort  of 
knowledge  from  that  derived  from  translations.  She 
knew  the  times  also.  The  result  is  a  most  interesting 
sketch  of  a  character  which  she  makes  attractive  with- 
out minimizing  the  qualities  we  associate  with  that 
name ;  or,  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say,  without 
omitting  hints  of  those  qualities,  because  the  portrait 
is  of  Machiavelli  in  his  youth. 

His  conversation  is  tinctured  with  the  peculiar 
flavor  which  we  should  naturally  expect  in  the  future 
author  of  *  The  Prince.'  He  admires  Soderini's  attack 
upon  Pieroda  Bibbiena  because  both  the  offence  and 
its  punishment  are  beneficial  to  Soderini.  He  says 
at  another  time,  in  illustration  of  this  Machiavellian 
idea :  "  Many  of  these  half-way  severities  are  mere 
hot-headed  blundering.  The  only  safe  blows  to  be 
inflicted  on  men  and  parties  are  the  blows  that  are 
too  heavy  to  be  avenged ;  "  and  when  Cennini  says 
that  is  Satanical,  he  laughs  and  replies  that  Satan  was 
a  blunderer  who  made  a  stupendous  failure.  "  If  he 
had  succeeded  we  should  all  have  been  worshipping 
him,  and  his  portrait  would  have  been  more  flattered." 
He  measures  "  men's  dulness  by  the  devices  they  trust 


Her  Sympathy  275 

in  for  deceiving  others."  His  clear  natural  vision 
penetrates  the  political  mistakes  of  Savonarola,  and 
he  points  out  with  cool  incisiveness  the  fatal  points 
in  the  friar's  position.  But  he  lacks  the  vision  which 
belongeth  not  to  the  natural  man,  and  fails  to  fathom 
the  spiritual  grandeur  of  Savonarola.  He  is  always 
contrasted  pleasantly  with  the  merely  spiteful  cynics 
like  Francesco  Cei  and  Ceccone.  When  Cei  sneers  at 
Politian  for  praising  both  Savonarola  and  Alexander, 
Machiavelli  laughs  and  says,  "  A  various  scholar  must 
have  various  opinions,"  —  the  cynicism  of  intellect 
versus  the  cynicism  of  sheer  ill-will.  His  refined 
irony  is  always  used  as  a  buffer,  in  '  Romola,'  to  some 
grosser  kind.  There  is  a  winsome  magnanimity  in 
him,  in  fact,  for,  though  suspicious  of  Tito,  and  a 
Httle  jealous  of  his  success,  he  defends  him  against 
the  venom  of  Cei's  gossip  about  the  stolen  jewels: 
"  You  forget  the  danger  of  the  precedent,  Francesco. 
The  next  mad  beggarman  may  accuse  you  of  stealing 
his  verses,  or  me,  God  keep  me,  of  stealing  his 
coppers."  And  yet  he  is  not  above  thinking  Savona- 
rola capable  of  false  prophesyings,  nor  does  he  blame 
him  for  them  except  that  they  are  not  wise  prophesy- 
ings also,  as  the  times  were  on  his  side,  and  he  might 
have  done  something  great.  The  grand  charcoal 
sketch  of  Savonarola  in  this  novel  reveals  faults  as 
well  as  virtues;  but  because  Machiavelli's  natural 
cleverness  was  unable  to  comprehend  the  complexi- 
ties of  the  faults,  it  could  not  pierce  the  depth  of  the 
virtues.  The  analysis  is  so  fine  that  one  exclaims, 
"  That  is  the  real  Machiavelli !  "  And  the  case  is 
interesting  because  the  synthesis  is  not  only  based 
on  a  true  analysis,  but  is  illuminated  also  by  the  his- 
torical imagination. 


276  George  Eliot 


The  makers  of  the  best  of  modern  English  diction- 
aries have  thought  so  well  of  Fred  Vincy's  definition 
of  a  prig  that  they  have  included  it  among  the  ex- 
amples under  that  title.  "  A  prig,"  says  Fred,  "  is  a 
fellow  who  is  always  making  you  a  present  of  his 
opinions."  He  is,  of  necessity,  a  kill-joy  and  a 
nuisance;  a  jest  for  enemies  and  a  burden  for 
friends.  And  he  is  of  no  use  whatever  in  the  world, 
unless  as  a  test  for  saintship  in  others ;  for  to  put  up 
with  him  charity  must  suffer  very  long  and  be  most 
exceeding  kind.  It  was  like  old  Thackeray  to  say 
that  his  Esmond  was  a  prig;  but  he  was,  in  reality, 
nothing  of  the  kind.  Thackeray  held  the  common 
view  that  if  you  stood  stoutly  for  virtue  and  truth, 
and  did  not  yield  now  and  then  to  the  weaknesses  of 
the  majority,  you  were  a  bit  too  good  for  mortal 
companionship.  It  is  a  thoroughly  worldly  view, 
because  Thackeray  was  a  thorough  man  of  the 
world.  But  surely  that  is  not  priggishness?  If  it  is, 
then  all  the  strong  souls  that  have  ever  lived,  all  the 
reformers  and  all  the  martyrs,  and  all  who  have  not 
been  afraid  to  look  Wrong  in  the  face  and  say,  "  You 
are  Wrong,"  and  to  look  Right  in  the  face  and  say, 
"  You  are  Right,"  have  been  prigs  ;  and  the  only 
persons  who  are  not  prigs  are  the  easy-going 
creatures  we  meet  every  day,  who  do  what  most  men 
and  women  do  for  no  other  reason  than  that  most 
men  and  women  do  it.  If  there  is  anybody  in  this 
vale  of  tears  who  is  wholly  irreproachable,  you  may 
be  sure  that  he  is  the  one  man  in  the  universe  who 
is  wholly  modest:  if  he  is  conscious  of  the  fact,  it 


Her  Sympathy  '  277 

follows  that  he  is  not  irreproachable.  The  trouble 
with  most  "  irreproachable  "  people  is  that  they  are 
unapproachable  also. 

Daniel  Deronda  is,  therefore,  most  decidedly,  not 
a  prig.  His  chief  weakness  is  sympathy  ["you  have 
a  passion  for  people  who  are  pelted,  Dan"],  which  is 
the  chief  thing  a  prig  is  deficient  in.  A  prig  is  an 
egoist.  Deronda  was  always  doing,  or  thinking 
about  doing,  something  for  others.  He  did  not 
smoke  himself,  but  he  carried  a  cigar  case  in  his 
pocket,  the  contents  of  which  he  offered  his  friends, 
upon  occasion.  A  prig  would  have  pointed  out  to 
his  tobacco-consuming  acquaintances  the  evils  of  the 
habit,  illustrating  the  beauty  of  abstention  with  edi- 
fying references  to  himself  Lydgate  is  not  a  prig, 
because  his  occasionally  pragmatical  talk  is  not 
prompted  by  a  consuming  self-love,  but  by  a  self- 
consuming  love  for  his  profession ;  and  his  anger  is 
stirred,  not  because  his  coworkers  do  not  agree  with 
him,  but  because  of  their  stubborn  and  harmfully 
stupid  opposition  to  all  reform.  A  physician  who 
happened  at  the  same  time  to  be  a  prig  would  not 
have  acknowledged  at  Raffles'  death  that  he  had, 
after  all,  made  a  mistake.  Your  real  prig  never 
makes  mistakes. 

As  for  Felix  Holt  and  Adam  Bede,  more  allowance 
must  be  made,  because  of  their  humbler  stations  in 
life,  conversational  self-restraint  being  not  only  a 
matter  of  grace  but  of  gentle  breeding  also.  If  De- 
ronda and  Lydgate  had  talked  with  the  outspoken- 
ness of  those  two  worthies,  they  could  hardly  have 
escaped  this  opprobrious  title,  which  has  been  care- 
lessly given  them  by  some.  But  to  bestow  it  upon 
the  honest  wrath  of  the  radical  and   the  righteous 


278  George  Eliot 

bluntness  of  the  strong  young  carpenter  is  to  take 
narrow  views.  Felix  expressly  tells  Esther  that  he 
does  not  think  himself  better  than  others,  that  he 
does  not  blame  others  for  not  doing  as  he  does  ;  but 
that  he  is  nevertheless  determined  not  to  get  entan- 
gled in  affairs  where  he  "  must  wink  at  dishonesty 
and  pocket  the  proceeds,  and  justify  that  knavery  as 
part  of  a  system  that"  he  "cannot  alter."  He  sees 
that  the  old  Catholics  were  right  with  their  higher 
and  lower  rule,  and  that  he  is  called  upon  to  accept 
the  higher.  To  some  men  appears  "  the  strong 
angel  with  the  implacable  brow,"  and  on  his  awful 
lips  are  written  Goethe's  words,  "  Renounce  !  Thou 
must  renounce  !  "  Felix  Holt  was  one  of  those  men. 
He  says  he  will  not  be  rich ;  it  is  not  his  inward 
vocation.  "  Thousands  of  men  have  wedded  poverty 
because  they  expect  to  go  to  heaven  for  it,  but  I  wed 
it  because  it  enables  me  to  do  what  I  most  want  to 
do  on  earth."  And  yet  he  fairly  acknowledges  that 
"  some  men  do  well  to  accept  riches."  Now,  a  prig, 
in  dwelling  on  the  superiority  of  his  self-denial, 
would  not  have  made  this  positive  assertion  that 
others  do  well  in  doing  something  that  he  was  him- 
self above  doing:  he  would  have  said  "others  may 
do  well,"  with  a  hesitating  accent  on  the  conditional 
word.  Felix  is  not  addressing  his  working-men, 
remember,  but  pleading  among  the  birches  with  the 
woman  he  loves,  whom  he  is  trying  to  raise  from  the 
plane  of  taste  to  the  plane  of  thought,  and  who 
finally  is  raised  by  contact  with  his  noble  mind.  His 
notion  about  cravats  is  merely  the  exaggerated  em- 
phasis which  a  soul-stirring,  mind-convincing,  life- 
binding  theory  will  lay  upon  details.  It  is  a  very 
great  book,  this  '  Felix  Holt,'  because  it  throbs  with 


Her  Sympathy  279 

the  vivifying  truth  that  a  man  should  stay  in  his 
place  to  accomplish  his  purpose;  and  differentiates 
for  all  time  a  genuine  and  a  fictitious,  a  moral  and 
a  political,  radicalism.  Felix  belongs  to  the  people. 
God  has  given  him  gifts.  He  intends,  please  God, 
to  use  them  for  the  people.  Who  cares  whether  he 
wears  cravats  or  not?  ^ 

Scepticism  has  its  advantages.  In  unexpected 
ways  it  is  the  servant  of  an  exalted  ideality  in  its 
searching  distrust  of  "  practical  "  measures  which  fail 
to  touch  the  hidden  sores.  *  Felix  Holt '  is  a  politi- 
cal novel  in  the  best  sense,  in  which  sense  it  is,  with 
the  exception  of  '  Alton  Locke  '  and  '  Les  Miserables,' 
the  only  political  novel  in  existence.  Its  politics 
are  subordinated  to  a  philosophical  idealism.  Its 
hero  is  a  literal  radical  because  he  aims  at  a  literal 
reform.  One  has  only  to  contrast  the  talk  of  the 
trades-union  speaker  at  the  Duffield  hustings  with 
Felix's  ringing  charges  to  understand  this  vital  dis- 
tinction. The  one  wants  power  through  the  ballot; 
the  other  carefully  distinguishes  between  ignorant 
and  instructed  power,  and  shows  that  the  ballot,  un- 
der existing  circumstances,  would  only  increase  the 
misery.  What  he  is  aiming  at  is  to  force  public 
opinion,  "  the  greatest  power  under  heaven,"  into 
proper  views  of  the  labor  problem,  knowing  that 
without  that  the  ballot  is  a  mere  mischief-maker. 
Class  elevation  is  the  desideratum, — moral  conversion, 
not  political  change.  Herein  is  the  Comptist  faith, 
once  more,  and  the  faith  of  all  moral  enthusiasts  as 

1  When  one  remembers  the  starched  towels  men  wrapped  around 
their  necks  in  those  days  and  called  them  cravats,  one  is  ready  to 
acknowledge  that  there  may  have  been  more  of  common-sense  than 
stubbornness  in  Felix's  position. 


28o  George  Eliot 

against  the  mechanical  legislative  efforts  of  Saint- 
Simonism  and  worse. 

With  this  should  be  read  the  expansion  of  the  idea 
in  the  '  Address  to  Working-men  by  Felix  Holt,' 
printed  in  the  'Essays;'  where,  basing  the  argument 
on  the  recognized  principle  of  Trades-unionism, 
the  author  proves  that  society  can  only  prosper 
when  its  members  consider  the  general  good  as  well 
as  their  own.  This  '  Address '  covers  the  Reform  of 
'6^,  while  the  story  belongs  to  the  stirring  days  of  '32. 
The  *  Address '  is  a  postscript,  emphasizing  what 
the  novel  sets  forth;  and  its  publication  shows  that 
its  author  did  not  intend  the  latter  to  be  merely  a  vivid 
picture  of  a  certain  period :  with  her  usual  thorough- 
ness, she  made  that  merely  the  milieu  for  ideas  cov- 
ering all  periods.  That  *  Felix  Holt'  did  not  close  in 
a  blaze  of  victory  is  not  because  of  any  heavy-hearted 
despair  as  to  the  ultimate  triumph  of  justice:  such  a 
tone  would  have  been,  foolishly  optimistic  in  the  light 
of  observation.  Moral  changes  come  slowly,  and  are 
not  generally  discernible  in  any  one  lifetime. 

Here  is  George  Eliot's  radicalism,  —  a  pure  radi- 
calism, a  radical  radicalism;  ^  having  the  strong  sup- 
port of  a  thinker  like  John  Stuart  Mill,  who  always 
maintained  that  the  ballot  alone  would  not  serve. 
See  how  such  radicalism  is  really  conservatism,  in 
that  while  striking  at  the  root  of  acknowledged  evil, 
it  aims  at  conserving  what  is  good  in  the  old,  in  pre- 
serving it  from  a  less  complete  radicalism,  which  would 
in  destroying  it  only  give  birth  to  a  worse  new.  See 
the  true  artist  nature  at  work  with  the  nature  of  the  real 

1  Unlike  her  Spike,  in  '  Theophrastus,'  to  whom  the  epithet  was 
applied  very  unfairly,  "  as  he  never  went  to  the  root  of  anything." 


Her  Sympathy  281 

radical.     The   book    might  just   as   well  have  been 
called  'Felix   Holt   the   Conservative.' 

Contrasted  with  Harold's  political  radicalism,  what 
Felix  advocates  is  as  gold  with  dross.  Compared 
with  Esther,  refined  as  we  see  her  at  last  by  Felix, 
Harold  and  his  social  superiority  are  the  vulgar  real- 
ities, not  the  absence  of  cravats  in  Felix's  bureau ; 
and  as  mistress  of  Transome  Court,  this  woman  would 
have  ranked  below  the  wife  of  Felix  Holt. 

It  is  an  important  point,  because  if  George  Eliot's 
strongest  characters  are  really  prigs,  how  can  we 
sympathize  with  her  sympathy  for  them?  Indeed, 
there  is  only  one  prig  in  these  fictions,  and  that  is 
Tom  Tulliver.  It  is  natural  for  the  average  boy  of 
strong  integrity  and  with  a  love  of  justice  in  him  to  be 
a  prig;  for  such  a  boy  is,  almost  inevitably,  an  egoist, 
inasmuch  as  he  has  not  reached  the  age  of  opinions 
toned  down  by  extenuating  circumstances.  Tom  Tul- 
liver is  the  natural  boy,  —  perhaps  we  should  say  the 
natural  Anglo-Saxon  boy,  of  high  courage  and  true, 
brave  principles,  with  a  lingering  touch  of  the  savage, 
and  blind  to  all  subtle  distinctions  between  shades  of 
Right  and  Wrong.  It  is  a  part  of  the  fineness  of 
George  Eliot's  art  that  he  should  be  made  a  prig  — 
he  would  not  be  typical  else ;  and  this  emphasizes 
once  more  the  claim  that  Daniel  Deronda  is  not,  and 
never  was,  a  prig,  because  in  the  sketch  of  his  early 
years,  there  is  a  notable  absence  of  this  characteristic 
bullyragging  of  boyhood.  He  was  distinguishable 
from  the  average  boy,  in  other  words,  by  the  absence 
of  priggishness,  which  is  the  characteristic  of  typical 
boyhood. 


282  George  Eliot 


VI 

This  strength  of  entrance  into  the  hearts  of  others 
through  the  door  of  sympathy  is  effected  with  tender- 
footed  sureness  where  the  tread  is  most  apt  to  be 
either  too  heavy  or  too  light.  It  is  a  pity  that 
George  EHot  never  wrote  a  book  for  children,  because 
she  understood  them,  —  this  childless  woman.  She 
could  stoop  to  their  intelligence  without  lowering 
her  own ;  she  could  unbend  and  yet  stand  straight. 
Witness  the  delightful  Garth  children,  and  the  scene 
at  the  Vincy's  New  Year  party,  when  Mr.  Farebrother 
"  dramatized  an  intense  interest"  in  Mary's  story  of 
Rumpelotiltskin,  and  preached  his  little  sermon  against 
cakes,  how  they  were  bad  things,  especially  if  they 
were  sweet  and  had  plums  in  them,  —  a  little  to 
Louisa's  alarm,  who  "  took  the  affair  rather  seriously," 
We  have  often  to  apply  the  word  "  Shaksperean  "  to 
phases  of  George  Eliot's  power;  in  her  portrayal  of 
child-life  she  surpasses  Shakspere.  Her  boys  and 
girls  are  not  a  lump  sum  ticketed  "  children,"  like  a 
dozen  specimens  of  a  certain  species  of  beetle  in  a  nat- 
ural history  collection ;  but  are  just  as  much  individu- 
alized as  are  her  adults.  Harry  Transome,  for  ex- 
ample, is  as  different,  in  his  petty,  spiteful  cruelties, 
from  Tom  Tulliver  in  his  young  English  savagery,  as 
the  fathers  of  each  are  different;  and  one  sees  at 
once  the  insight  of  Lady  Debarry's  remark  that  Harry 
was  not  the  child  of  a  lady.  The  '  Mill  on  the  Floss' 
is  the  one  complete  idyll  in  literature  of  this  world  of 
childhood,  this  microcosm  of  a  world,  with  an  order 
and  growth  of  its  own,  repaying  a  loving  study  with 


Her  Sympathy  283 

views  into  depths  which,  alas  !  are  not  often  sounded 
at  later  stages. 

Through  the  children  our  hearts  are  opened  to  the 
elders,  just  as  they  are  in  "  real  life,"  as  we  say,  —  as 
if  a  fine  novel  was  not  real  life.  The  magician  waves 
her  wand  at  the  outset  over  Mr.  Gilfil : 

Thus  in  Shepperton  this  breach  with  Mr.  Oldinport 
tended  only  to  heighten  that  good  understanding  which  the 
Vicar  had  always  enjoyed  with  the  rest  of  his  parishioners, 
from  the  generation  whose  children  he  had  christened  a 
quarter  of  a  century  before,  down  to  that  hopeful  genera- 
tion represented  by  little  Tommy  Bond,  who  had  recently 
quitted  frocks  and  trousers  for  the  severe  simplicity  of  a 
tight  suit  of  corduroys,  relieved  by  numerous  brass  buttons. 
Tommy  was  a  saucy  boy,  impervious  to  all  impressions  of 
reverence,  and  excessively  addicted  to  humming-tops  and 
marbles,  with  which  recreative  resources  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  immoderately  distending  the  pockets  of  his  cordu- 
roys. One  day,  spinning  his  top  on  the  garden-walk,  and 
seeing  the  Vicar  advance  directly  towards  it,  at  that  excit- 
ing moment  when  it  was  beginning  to  "  sleep "  magnifi- 
cently, he  shouted  out  with  all  the  force  of  his  lungs, 
"  Stop  !  don't  knock  my  top  down,  now  !  "  From  that 
day  "  little  Corduroys  "  had  been  an  especial  favorite  with 
Mr.  Gilfil,  who  delighted  to  provoke  his  ready  scorn  and 
wonder  by  putting  questions  which  gave  Tommy  the 
meanest  opinion  of  his  intellect. 

"Well,  little  Corduroys,  have  they  milked  the  geese 
to-day?" 

"  Milked  the  geese  !  Why,  they  don't  milk  the  geese ; 
ye  'r  silly  !  " 

"  No  !  dear  heart !  why,  how  do  the  goslings  live,  then  ?  " 

The  nutriment  of  goslings  rather  transcending  Tommy's 
observations  in  natural  history,  he  feigned  to  understand 


284  George  Eliot 

the  question  in  an  exclamatory  rather  than  an  interrogatory 
sense,  and  became  absorbed  in  winding  up  his  top. 

"  Ah,  I  see  you  don't  know  how  the  goslings  live  !  But 
did  you  notice  how  it  rained  sugar-plums  yesterday?" 
(Here  Tommy  became  attentive.)  "  Why,  they  fell  into 
my  pocket  as  I  rode  along.  You  look  into  my  pocket  and 
see  if  they  did  n't." 

Tommy,  without  waiting  to  discuss  the  alleged  antece- 
dent, lost  no  time  in  ascertaining  the  presence  of  the  agree- 
able consequent,  for  he  had  a  well-founded  belief  in  the 
advantages  of  diving  into  the  Vicar's  pocket.  Mr.  Gilfil 
called  it  his  wonderful  pocket,  because,  as  he  delighted  to 
tell  the  "young  shavers  "  and  "  two-shoes  "  —  so  he  called 
all  Httle  boys  and  girls  —  whenever  he  put  pennies  into  it, 
they  turned  into  sugar-plums  or  gingerbread,  or  some  other 
nice  thing.  Indeed,  little  Bessie  Parrot,  a  flaxen-headed 
"  two-shoes,"  very  white  and  fat  as  to  her  neck,  always  had 
the  admirable  directness  and  sincerity  to  salute  him  with 
the  question,  "What  zoo  dot  in  zoo  pottet?" 

With  such  an  auspicious  opening,  we  could  have 
found  it  in  our  hearts  to  have  forgiven  the  old  parson 
any  number  of  faults. 

Mrs.  Holt,  in  a  flash,  becomes  something  more  to 
us  than  a  humorous  mass  of  foibles  by  the  motherly 
longings  awakened  by  Felix's  attitude  towards  little 
Job  Tudge. 

"Where  does  Job  Tudge  live?"  she  said,  still  sitting, 
and  looking  at  the  droll  little  figure,  set  off  by  a  ragged 
jacket  with  a  tail  about  two  inches  deep  sticking  out  above 
the  funniest  of  corduroys. 

"  Job  has  two  mansions,"  said  Felix.  "  He  lives  here 
chiefly ;  but  he  has  another  home,  where  his  grandfather, 
Mr.  Tudge,  the  stone-breaker,  lives.     My  mother  is  very 


Her  Sympathy  285 

good  to  Job,  Miss  Lyon.  She  has  made  him  a  little  bed 
in  a  cupboard,  and  she  gives  him  sweetened  porridge." 

The  exquisite  goodness  implied  in  these  words  of  Felix 
impressed  Esther  the  more,  because  in  her  hearing  his  talk 
had  usually  been  pungent  and  denunciatory.  Looking  at 
Mrs.  Holt,  she  saw  that  her  eyes  had  lost  their  bleak 
northeasterly  expression,  and  were  shining  with  some  mild- 
ness on  little  Job,  who  had  turned  round  toward  her, 
propping  his  head  against  Felix. 

"  Well,  why  should  n't  I  be  motherly  to  the  child.  Miss 
Lyon?"  said  Mrs.  Holt,  whose  strong  powers  of  argument 
required  the  file  of  an  imagined  contradiction,  if  there  were 
no  real  one  at  hand.  "  I  never  was  hard-hearted,  and  I 
never  will  be.  It  was  Felix  picked  the  child  up  and  took 
to  him,  you  may  be  sure,  for  there  's  nobody  else  master 
where  he  is ;  but  I  was  n't  going  to  beat  the  orphin  child 
and  abuse  him  because  of  that,  and  him  as  straight  as  an 
arrow  when  he 's  stripped,  and  me  so  fond  of  children,  and 
only  had  one  of  my  own  to  live.  I  'd  three  babies,  Miss 
Lyon,  but  the  blessed  Lord  only  spared  Felix,  and  him  the 
masterfulest  and  the  brownest  of  'em  all.  But  I  did'  my 
duty  by  him,  and  I  said,  he  '11  have  more  schooling  than 
his  father,  and  he  '11  grow  up  a  doctor,  and  marry  a  woman 
with  money  to  furnish  —  as  I  was  myself,  spoons  and  every 
thing  —  and  I  shall  have  the  grandchildren  to  look  up  to 
me,  and  be  drove  out  in  the  gig  sometimes,  like  old  Mrs. 
Lukyn.  And  you  see  what  it 's  all  come  to.  Miss  Lyon : 
here 's  Felix  made  a  common  man  of  himself,  and  says 
he  '11  never  be  married  —  which  is  the  most  unreasonable 
thing,  and  him  never  easy  but  when  he  's  got  the  child  on 
his  lap,  or  when  —  " 

"Stop,  stop,  mother,"  Felix  burst  in;  "pray  don't  use 
that  limping  argument  again  —  that  a  man  should  marry 
because  he  's  fond  of  children.  That 's  a  reason  for  not 
marrying.     A  bachelor's  children  are  always  young ;  they  're 


286  George  Eliot 

immortal  children  —  always  lisping,  waddling,  helpless,  and 
with  a  chance  of  turning  out  good." 

"  The  Lord  above  may  know  what  you  mean  !  And 
haven't  other  folks'  children  a  chance  of  turning  out 
good?" 

"  Oh,  they  grow  out  of  it  very  fast.  Here 's  Job  Tudge, 
now,"  said  Felix,  turning  the  little  one  round  on  his  knee, 
and  holding  his  head  by  the  back ;  "  Job's  limbs  will  get 
lanky ;  this  little  fist,  that  looks  like  a  puff-ball,  and  can 
hide  nothing  bigger  than  a  gooseberry,  will  get  large  and 
bony,  and  perhaps  want  to  clutch  more  than  its  share ; 
these  wide  blue  eyes  that  tell  me  more  truth  than  Job 
knows,  will  narrow  and  narrow,  and  try  to  hide  truth  that 
Job  would  be  better  without  knowing ;  this  little  negative 
nose  will  become  long  and  self-asserting;  and  this  little 
tongue  —  put  out  thy  tongue,  Job  "  —  Job,  awe-struck  under 
this  ceremony,  put  out  a  little  red  tongue  very  timidly  — 
"  this  tongue,  hardly  bigger  than  a  rose-leaf,  will  get  large  and 
thick,  wag  out  of  season,  do  mischief,  brag  and  cant  for 
gain  or  vanity,  and  cut  as  cruelly,  for  all  its  clumsiness,  as 
if  it  were  a  sharp-edged  blade.  Big  Job  will  perhaps  be 
naughty — "  As  Felix,  speaking  with  the  loud  emphatic 
distinctness  habitual  to  him,  brought  out  this  terribly 
familiar  word.  Job's  sense  of  mystification  became  too 
painful :  he  hung  his  lip,  and  began  to  cry. 

"  See  there,"  said  Mrs.  Holt,  "  you  're  frightening  the 
innicent  child  with  such  talk  —  and  it 's  enough  to  frighten 
them  that  thinks  themselves  the  safest." 

"  Look  here.  Job,  my  man,"  said  Felix,  setting  the  boy 
down  and  turning  him  toward  Esther ;  "  go  to  Miss  Lyon, 
ask  her  to  smile  at  you,  and  that  will  dry  up  your  tears  like 
the  sunshine." 

"The  question  of  beauty,"  says  Emerson,  "takes 
us  out  of  surfaces  to  thinking  of  the  foundations  of 


Her  Sympathy  287 

things.  The  tint  of  the  flower  proceeds  from  its  root." 
The  foundation  of  *  Silas  Marner '  is  the  beauty  of  a 
sweet  human  interest  filling  a  heart  made  vacant  by 
the  destruction  of  what  that  heart  held  dear,  and 
which,  base  as  it  was,  it  had  clung  to  in  the  death  of 
affection  brought  about  by  a  treachery  which  its 
simplicity  accepted  as  the  knell  of  all  human  inter- 
course and  love.  And  the  change  is  wrought 
by  a  little  child.  "And  a  little  child  shall  lead 
them." 

I  once  heard  a  physician  say  that  a  child's  illness 
calls  for  more  science  and  skill  than  an  adult's,  be- 
cause the  symptoms  must  be  discerned  without  verbal 
hints  from  the  patient.  In  George  Eliot  we  repose 
the  kind  of  faith  we  place  in  the  old  family  doctor 
whom  we  call  in  when  anxious  about  the  baby's 
health.  One  feels  that  there  will  be  no  mistake  in 
diagnosis,  and  that  right  treatment  will  follow.  Dor- 
othea's hands  were  "  powerful,  feminine,  maternal." 
Mark  the  ascending  emphasis :  it  describes  George 
Eliot's  attitude  towards  children;  and  hence  the 
mother's  instinct  in  this  woman,  who  never  was  a 
mother,  except  in  the  sense  that  Felix  Holt  was  a 
father. 

She  went  on  willingly,  singing  with  ready  memory  vari- 
ous thing  by  Gordigiani  and  Schubert ;  then,  when  she  had 
left  the  piano,  Mab  said,  entreatingly,  "  Oh,  Mirah,  if  you 
would  not  mind  singing  the  little  hymn." 

"  It  is  too  childish,"  said  Mirah.     "  It  is  like  lisping." 

"  What  is  the  hymn?  "  said  Deronda. 

"  It  is  the  Hebrew  hymn  she  remembers  her  mother 
singing  over  her  when  she  lay  in  her  cot,"  said  Mrs. 
Meyrick. 


288  George  Eliot 

"  I  should  like  very  much  to  hear  it,"  said  Deronda,  "  if 
you  think  I  am  worthy  to  hear  what  is  so  sacred." 

"  I  will  sing  it  if  you  like,"  said  Mirah,  "  but  I  don't 
sing  real  words  —  only  here  and  there  a  syllable  like  hers 
—  the  rest  is  lisping.  Do  you  know  Hebrew?  because  if 
you  do,  my  singing  will  seem  childish  nonsense." 

Deronda  shook  his  head.  "  It  will  be  quite  good  Hebrew 
to  me," 

Mirah  crossed  her  little  hands  and  feet  in  her  easiest 
attitude,  and  then  lifted  up  her  head  at  an  angle  which 
seemed  to  be  directed  to  some  invisible  face  bent  over  her, 
while  she  sung  a  little  hymn  of  quaint  melancholy  intervals, 
with  syllables  that  really  seemed  childish  lisping  to  her 
audience ;  but  the  voice  in  which  she  gave  it  forth  had 
gathered  even  a  sweeter,  more  cooing  tenderness  than  was 
heard  in  her  other  songs. 

"  If  I  were  ever  to  know  the  real  words,  I  should  still  go 
on  in  my  old  way  with  them,"  said  Mirah,  when  she  had  re- 
peated the  hymn  several  times. 

"  Why  not?"  said  Deronda.  "The  lisped  syllables  are 
full  of  meaning." 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  said  Mrs.  Meyrick.  "  A  mother  hears 
something  like  a  lisp  in  her  children's  talk  to  the  very  last. 
Their  words  are  not  just  what  everybody  else  says,  though 
they  may  be  spelt  the  same.  If  I  were  to  live  till  my  Hans 
got  old,  I  should  still  see  the  boy  in  him.  A  mother's  love, 
I  often  say,  is  like  a  tree  that  has  got  all  the  wood  in  it 
from  the  very  first  it  made." 

"  Is  not  that  the  way  with  friendship,  too  ? "  said 
Deronda,  smiling.  "  We  must  not  let  mothers  be  too 
arrogant." 

The  bright  little  woman  shook  her  head  over  her  darning. 

"  It  is  easier  to  find  an  old  mother  than  an  old  friend. 
Friendships  begin  with  liking  or  gratitude  —  roots  that  can 
be  pulled  up.     Mother's  love  begins  deeper  down." 


Her  Sympathy  289 

Probably  Mr.  Brooke,  were  he  brought  into  the 
talk  at  this  point,  would  say :  "  Well,  but  dogs,  now, 
and  that  sort  of  thing.  I  had  it  myself,  that  love 
of  dogs.  I  went  a  good  deal  into  that  at  one 
time.  But  a  man  can  go  too  far.  Too  far,  you 
know."  I  certainly  do  not  wish  to  go  too  far  in 
pursuit  of  any  theory,  nor  to  substantiate  any 
theory  from  unsubstantial  facts.  But  would  not  my 
medical  friend  be  justified  in  extending  his  belief 
in  the  finer  science  needed  for  the  treatment  of  chil- 
dren to  the  so-called  dumb  animals,  and  find  the 
science  requisite  there  equally  fine?  Veterinary  sur- 
gery seems  to  have  gone  down  in  the  general  moral 
wreck  with  everything  connected  with  kennels  and 
stables,  and  one  rarely  hears  of  a  horse  doctor  leading 
a  cotillon.  But  there  ought  to  be  no  grander  pro- 
fession in  the  world ;  and  it  fits  in  with  the  Positivist 
belief  to  care  for  living  things  considered  positively, 
and  not  relatively  in  regard  to  some  future  life,  Mr. 
Buchanan  tells  of  the  indignation  with  which  George 
Eliot  once  met  his  reference  to  the  necessarily  short 
life  allotted  to  her  splendid  bull-terrier,  as  if  it  were 
cruel  to  deny  to  the  lower  what  we  affirm  of  the 
higher  animals.^  At  all  events,  I  am  sure  that  her 
love  for  dogs  sprang  from  the  same  source  as  her  love 
for  children;  and  what  makes  her  domestic  scenes 
so  complete  is  her  inclusion  of  this  noble  friend  of 
man  among  the  familiar  pictures  of  her  country  life. 

1  'A  Look  Around  Literature,' pp.  2iS  se^.  But  reports  of  con- 
versations —  especially  such  conversations  —  should  always  be  read 
with  some  doubt  as  to  precise  accuracy.  Memory  is  notably  tricky, 
and  in  the  heat  of  controversial  talk  much  is  struck  off  which  would 
be  modified  if  the  thought  of  perpetuity  in  print  were  considered. 
If  only  tones,  gestures,  laughter,  tears  could  be  reported !  Without 
them  as  interpreters,  the  text  remains  imperfect. 

19 


290  George  Eliot 

There  are  several  well-known  dogs  in  fiction,  —  nota- 
bly Bill  Sikes's  Bull's-eye  and  the  noble  staghound 
of  'The  Talisman,'  to  say  nothing  of  the  immortal 
Rab.  But  nearly  every  character  of  George  Eliot's 
making  is  intimately  associated  with  this  "  friend 
of  man." 

The  last  time  I  made  my  journey  through  the 
novels  I  kept  tally  of  the  number  of  dogs  desiring  my 
further  acquaintance  there ;  and  unless  I  have  over- 
looked some  of  them,  there  are  fifty-five,  divided  as 
follows  :  eight  spaniels,  three  bull-terriers,  four  ter- 
riers, three  bloodhounds,  three  setters,  two  bulldogs, 
one  sheepdog,  two  shepherds,  two  Newfoundlands, 
two  King  Charles,  two  pointers,  two  water-spaniels, 
one  pug,  two  maltese,  one  turn-spit,  two  black-and- 
tans,  one  deerhound,  one  staghound,  one  Blenheim, 
one  retriever,  one  St.  Bernard,  one  mastiff,  one  half- 
mastiff,  half-bull,  one  unspecified  "  Fido,"  one  mongrel, 
one  black  cur,  belonging  to  the  gypsies,  in  '  Mill  on 
the  Floss,'  and  five  other  undesignated  animals.  Am 
I  not  safe  in  venturing  the  assertion  that  there  is  no 
category  in  any  other  writer  even  faintly  approaching 
this? 

And  the  same  cleverness  is  shown  in  the  invention, 
or,  let  us  say,  the  discovery,  of  their  names,  as  we 
saw  before  when  considering  their  masters.  The  sol- 
emn mastiff  of  mine  host  in  the  '  Spanish  Gypsy ' 
is  appropriately  called  Seneca,  and  Mary  Garth's 
black-and-tan  answers  when  you  address  him  as  Fly. 
Mr.  Brooke's  St.  Bernard  is  Monk,  and  the  deer- 
hound  is  Fleet.  A  King  Charles  suggests  Minny, 
and  Mumps  seems  natural  to  any  dog  Bob  Jakin 
might  own.  She  is  full  also  of  indirect  references. 
She  confesses  to  the  same  kind  of  sympathy  for  un- 


Her  Sympathy  291 

gainly  people  that  she  has  for  mongrels :  the  finely 
bred  dogs  any  one  can  love.  Caterina  is  represented 
as  following  Gilfil  like  a  Blenheim  spaniel  trotting 
after  a  large  setter.  Gwendolen  wheels  away  from 
Lush  as  if  he  had  been  a  muddy  hound.  Maggie  is 
on  the  watch  —  don't  you  see  her? — like  a  skye- 
terrier ;  and  in  another  place,  is  "  shaking  the  water 
from  her  black  locks  like  a  skye-terrier  escaped  from 
his  bath."  Hans  Meyrick  is  humorously  reminded 
by  the  child  Jacob,  in  relation  to  Mirah,  of  dogs  that 
have  been  brought  up  by  women  and  are  manageable 
by  them  only. 

She  enters  into  their  thoughts,  —  that  is,  she  inter- 
prets what  seem  to  be  their  thoughts,  with  a  sym- 
pathy which  brings  laughter  and  tears.  Mr.  Gilfil's 
loneliness  is  shared  with  no  other  society  than  that 
of  the  brown  old  setter,  Ponto,  "  who,  stretched  out 
at  full  length  on  the  rug  with  his  nose  between  his 
forepaws,  would  wrinkle  his  brows  and  lift  up  his  eye- 
lids every  now  and  then,  to  exchange  a  glance  of 
mutual  understanding  with  his  master."  When  Cat- 
erina started  out  on  her  journey  to  Mosslands,  she 
was  met  at  the  door  by  "  Rupert,  the  old  blood- 
hound stationed  on  the  mat,  with  the  determination 
that  the  first  person  who  was  sensible  enough  to  take 
a  walk  that  morning  should  have  the  honor  of  his 
approbation  and  society." 

As  he  thrust  his  great  black  and  tawny  head  under  her 
hand,  and  wagged  his  tail  with  vigorous  eloquence,  and 
reached  the  climax  of  his  welcome  by  jumping  up  to  lick 
her  face,  which  was  at  a  convenient  licking  height  for  him, 
Caterina  felt  quite  grateful  to  the  old  dog  for  his  friend- 
liness. Animals  are  such  agreeable  friends.  They  ask  no 
questions ;  they  pass  no  criticisms. 


292  George  Eliot 

And  the  last  touch  in  the  death  scene  of  Anthony 
is  given  to  this  grand  old  Rupert.  Sir  Christopher 
is  hurrying  as  fast  as  he  can  to  where  the  body  of 
Anthony  has  been  found,  and  where  the  dog  already 
is  beside  it.  "  He  comes  back  and  licks  the  old 
baronet's  hand,  as  if  to  say  '  Courage  !  *  and  is  then 
down  again  snuffing  the  body." 

Rupert  was  there,  too,  waiting  and  watching ;  licking  first 
the  dead  and  then  the  living  hands;  then  running  off 
on  Mr.  Bates's  track,  as  if  he  would  follow  and  hasten  his 
return,  but  in  a  moment  turning  back  again,  unable  to  quit 
the  scene  of  his  master's  sorrow. 

Faithful  unto  death ! 

What  a  charming  introduction  to  Mr.  Irwine's 
home,  which  we  are  invited  to  enter,  very  softly, 
"  without  awaking  the  glossy  brown  setter  who  is 
stretched  across  the  hearth,  with  her  two  puppies 
beside  her;  or  the  pug  who  is  dozing  with  his  black 
muzzle  aloft  like  a  sleepy  president  "  !  The  setter's 
name  is  Juno,  and  presently  we  see  her  wagging 
her  tail  "  with  calm,  matronly  pleasure ;  "  and  when 
Arthur  comes  in,  mingled  with  the  confusion  of 
greetings  and  handshakings  are  "  the  joyous  short 
barks  and  wagging  of  tails  on  the  part  of  the  canine 
members  of  the  family,  which  tells  that  the  visitor  is 
on  the  best  terms  with  the  visited."  The  Poysers' 
chained  bulldog  performs  "  a  Pyrrhic  dance  "  as  the 
parson  and  the  captain  leave  the  farm-yard,  his 
peculiar  bulldog  frame  of  mind  at  such  an  intrusion 
being  expressed  by  "  furious  indignation."  Adam's 
Gyp  is  one  of  the  characters  in  the  story,  and  it  is 
noticeable  that  he  does  not  bark,  but  howls,  at  the 


Her  Sympathy  293 

mysterious  rapping  at  the  door,  the  night  of  old 
Bede's  death.  None  but  a  close  student  of  dogs 
would  have  mentioned  that. 

George  Eliot  has  a  very  deep  feeling  for  this 
"  dumb  "  animal,  who  is  not  dumb  at  all. 

"  Poor  dog  !  "  said  Dinah,  patting  the  rough  gray  coat ; 
"  I  've  a  strange  feeling  about  the  dumb  things,  as  if  they 
wanted  to  speak,  and  it  was  a  trouble  to  'em  because  they 
could  n't.  I  can't  help  being  sorry  for  the  dogs  always, 
though  perhaps  there  's  no  need.  But  they  may  well  have 
more  in  them  than  they  know  how  to  make  us  understand, 
for  we  can't  say  half  what  we  feel  with  our  words." 

The  finished  fascination  of  his  air  came  chiefly  from  the 
absence  of  demand  and  assumption.  It  was  that  of  a  fleet, 
soft-coated,  dark-eyed  animal  that  delights  you  by  not 
bounding  away  in  indifference  from  you,  and  unexpectedly 
pillows  its  chin  on  your  palm,  and  looks  up  at  you  desiring 
to  be  stroked  —  as  if  it  loved  you. 

And  she  makes  them  enter  into  your  feelings  for 
the  moment,  as  a  dog  always  will  if  you  give  him 
half  a  chance. 

The  sun  was  already  breaking  out ;  the  sound  of  the  mill 
seemed  cheerful  again ;  the  granary  doors  were  open  ;  and 
there  was  Yap,  the  queer  white-and-brown  terrier,  with  one 
ear  turned  back,  trotting  about  and  snifiing  vaguely,  as  if 
he  were  in  search  of  a  companion.  It  was  irresistible. 
Maggie  tossed  her  hair  back  and  ran  downstairs,  seized 
her  bonnet  without  putting  it  on,  peeped,  and  then  dashed 
along  the  passage,  lest  she  should  encounter  her  mother, 
and  was  quickly  out  in  the  yard,  whirling  round  like  a 
Pythoness,  and  singing  as  she  whirled,  "  Yap,  Yap,  Tom  's 


294  George  Eliot 

coming  home  !  "  while  Yap  danced  and  barked  round  her, 
as  much  as  to  say,  if  there  was  any  noise  wanted  he  was 
the  dog  for  it. 

Her  dogs  are  always  true  to  their  best  dog-nature, 
even  when  her  men  and  women  are  not  true  to  their 
best  human  nature. 

Snuff,  the  brown  spaniel,  who  had  placed  herself  in  front 
of  him,  and  had  been  watching  him  for  some  time,  now 
jumped  up  in  impatience  for  the  expected  caress.  But 
Godfrey  thrust  her  away  without  looking  at  her,  and  left  the 
room,  followed  humbly  by  the  unresenting  Snuff,  —  perhaps 
because  she  saw  no  other  career  open  to  her. 

When  Lydgate,  in  one  of  those  involuntarily  awkward 
actions  assumed  in  angry  moods,  "  stooped  to  beckon 
the  tiny  black  spaniel,"  that  wise  creature  "  had  the 
insight  to  decline  his  hollow  caresses." 

Yes,  and  artistically  true,  too.  Mrs.  Transome's 
sleepy  old  and  fat  Blenheim  is  as  appropriate  to  her 
as  the  fine  black  retriever  who  guards  Mr.  Transome 
(and  who  barks  "  anxiously,"  another  fine  touch  of 
observation  of  an  aged  dog)  is  to  him ;  and  one  can- 
not think  of  the  sporting  parson  uncle  without  think- 
ing at  the  same  time  of  the  black  and  liver-spotted 
pointers  over  whom  he  shot.  "  Little  Treby  had  a 
new  rector,"  she  says,  near  the  close  of  the  book, 
"  and  more  were  sorry  besides  the  old  pointers." 
You  see,  the  dogs  come  in  among  the  final  touches, 
as  they  should.  The  King  Charles  puppy  belonging 
to  little  Harry,  "  with  big  eyes,  much  after  the  pat- 
tern of  the  boy's,"  is  as  much  a  part  of  the  boy  as  his 
clothes,  to  say  nothing  of  the  black  spaniel  Moro, 
whom  he  dragged  about,  tied  to  the  seat  of  a  toy 


Her  Sympathy  295 

wagon,  "  with  a  piece  of  scarlet  drapery  round  him, 
making  him  look  like  a  barbaric  prince  in  a  chariot." 
The  contrast  of  dogs  is  as  clever  as  that  of  the  other 
characters. 

Moro,  having  little  imagination,  objected  to  this,  and 
barked  with  feeble  snappishness  as  the  tyrannous  lad  ran 
forward,  then  whirled  the  chariot  round,  and  ran  back  to 
"  Gappa,"  then  came  to  a  dead  stop,  which  overset  the 
chariot,  that  he  might  watch  Uncle  Lingon's  water-spaniel 
run  for  the  hurled  stick  and  bring  it  in  his  mouth.  Nirarod 
kept  close  to  his  old  master's  legs,  glancing  with  much  in- 
difference at  this  youthful  ardor  about  sticks,  —  he  had 
"  gone  through  all  that ;  "  and  Dominic  walked  by,  looking 
on  blandly,  and  taking  care  of  both  young  and  old. 

Presently  Mrs.  Holt,  with  little  Job,  advances  upon 
this  group. 

She  courtesied  once,  as  if  to  the  entire  group,  now 
including  even  the  dogs,  who  showed  various  degrees  of 
curiosity,  especially  as  to  what  kind  of  game  the  smaller 
animal  Job  might  prove  to  be,  after  due  investigation. 

Bob  Jakin  declares  he 's  getting  so  full  of  money 
he  must  have  a  wife  to  spend  it  for  him.  "  But  it 's 
botherin*,  a  wife  is;  and  Mumps  mightn't  like  her." 
When  Stephen  struck  the  deep  notes  which  repre- 
sent the  tread  of  the  heavy  beasts  in  '  The  Creation,* 
Minny,  the  King  Charles,  — 

who  had  intrenched  himself,  trembling,  in  his  basket  as 
soon  as  the  music  began,  found  this  thunder  so  little  to  his 
taste  that  he  leaped  out  and  scampered  under  the  remotest 
chiffoniere,  as  the  most  eligible  place  in  which  a  small  dog 
could  await  the  crack  of  doom. 


296  George  Eliot 

"  Happen  you  'd  like  Mumps  for  company,  Miss,"  he 
said,  when  he  had  taken  the  baby  again.  "  He  's  rare 
company.  Mumps  is ;  he  knows  iverything,  an'  makes  no 
bother  about  it.  If  I  tell  him,  he  '11  lie  before  you  an' 
watch  you  —  as  still  —  just  as  he  watches  my  pack.  You  'd 
better  leave  him  a  bit ;  he  '11  get  fond  on  you.  Lors,  it 's 
a  fine  thing  to  hev  a  dumb  brute  fond  on  you ;  it  '11  stick 
to  you,  and  make  no  jaw." 

Just  as  our  hatred  of  Sikes  is  heightened  by  his 
treatment  of  Bull's-eye,  so  is  the  refined  cruelty  of 
Grandcourt  made  more  loathsome  by  the  trouble  he 
takes  to  torment  his  "  pets." 

Mr.  Grandcourt  had  drawn  his  chair  aside  so  as  to  face 
the  lawn,  and  with  his  left  leg  over  another  chair,  and  his 
right  elbow  on  the  table,  was  smoking  a  large  cigar,  while 
his  companion  was  still  eating.  The  dogs  —  half  a  dozen 
of  various  kinds  were  moving  lazily  in  and  out,  or  taking 
attitudes  of  brief  attention  —  gave  a  vacillating  preference 
first  to  one  gentleman,  then  to  the  other ;  being  dogs  in 
such  good  circumstances  that  they  could  play  at  hunger, 
and  liked  to  be  served  with  delicacies  which  they  declined 
to  put  into  their  mouths ;  all  except  Fetch,  the  beautiful 
liver-colored  water-spaniel,  which  sat  with  its  forepaws 
firmly  planted  and  its  expressive  brown  face  turned  upward, 
watching  Grandcourt  with  unshaken  constancy.  He  held 
in  his  lap  a  tiny  maltese  dog  with  a  tiny  silver  collar  and 
bell,  and  when  he  had  a  hand  unused  by  cigar  or  coffee- 
cup,  it  rested  on  this  small  parcel  of  animal  warmth.  I 
fear  that  Fetch  was  jealous,  and  wounded  that  her  master 
gave  her  no  word  or  look ;  at  last  it  seemed  that  she  could 
bear  this  neglect  no  longer,  and  she  gently  put  her  large 
silky  paw  on  her  master's  leg.  Grandcourt  looked  at  her 
with  unchanged  face  for  half  a  minute,  and  then  took  the 
trouble  to  lay  down  his  cigar  while  he  lifted  the  unimpas- 


Her  Sympathy  297 

sioned  Fluff  close  to  his  chin  and  gave  it  caressing  pats,  all 
the  while  gravely  watching  Fetch,  who,  poor  thing,  whim- 
pered interruptedly,  as  if  trying  to  repress  that  sign  of  dis- 
content, and  at  last  rested  her  head  beside  the  appealing 
paw,  looking  up  with  piteous  beseeching.  So,  at  least,  a 
lover  of  dogs  must  have  interpreted  Fetch,  and  Grandcourt 
kept  so  many  dogs  that  he  was  reputed  to  love  them  ;  at 
any  rate,  his  impulse  to  act  just  in  this  way  started  from 
such  an  interpretation.  But  when  the  amusing  anguish 
burst  forth  in  a  howling  bark,  Grandcourt  pushed  Fetch 
down  without  speaking,  and  depositing  Fluff  carelessly  on 
the  table  (where  his  black  nose  predominated  over  a  salt- 
cellar), began  to  look  to  his  cigar,  and  found,  with  some 
annoyance  against  Fetch  as  the  cause,  that  the  brute  of  a 
cigar  required  relighting.  Fetch,  having  begun  to  wail, 
found,  like  others  of  her  sex,  that  it  was  not  easy  to  leave 
off;  indeed,  the  second  howl  was  a  louder  one,  and  the 
third  was  like  unto  it. 

"  Turn  out  that  brute,  will  you  ?  "  said  Grandcourt  to  Lush. 

There  is  no  domestic  scene  without  them ;  they 
are  a  part  of  the  landscape.  The  first  thing  that 
Dorothea  discovers,  looking  abroad  on  the  dawning 
day  after  her  night  of  anguish,  is  the  shepherd  with 
his  dog. 

And  not  only  dogs.  Bob  Jakin  is  described  as 
regarding  Maggie  "  with  the  pursuant  gaze  of  an 
intelligent  dumb  animal  with  perceptions  more  per- 
fect than  his  comprehension."  It  is  not  only  the 
•'  bouquet  of  young  faces  "  around  the  Meyrick's  tea- 
table  that  we  are  invited  to  inspect.  There  is  Hafiz, 
the  cat,  "  seated  a  little  aloft,  with  large  eyes  on  the 
alert,  regarding  the  whole  scene  as  an  apparatus  for 
supplying  his  allowance  of  milk." 

Let  us  close  with  this  bit  of  domesticity  : 


298  George  Eliot 

Eppie  was  now  aware  that  her  behaviour  was  under 
observation,  but  it  was  only  the  observation  of  a  friendly 
donkey,  browsing  with  a  log  fastened  to  his  foot  —  a  meek 
donkey,  not  scornfully  critical  of  human  trivialities,  but 
thankful  to  share  in  them,  if  possible,  by  getting  his  nose 
scratched ;  and  Eppie  did  not  fail  to  gratify  him  with  her 
usual  notice,  though  it  was  attended  with  the  inconvenience 
of  his  following  them,  painfully,  up  to  the  very  door  of 
their  home. 

But  the  sound  of  a  sharp  bark  inside,  as  Eppie  put  the 
key  in  the  door,  modified  the  donkey's  views,  and  he  limped 
away  again  without  bidding.  The  sharp  bark  was  the  sign 
of  an  excited  welcome  that  was  awaiting  them  from  a 
knowing  brown  terrier,  who  after  dancing  at  their  legs  in  a 
hysterical  manner,  rushed  with  a  worrying  noise  at  a  tor- 
toise-shell kitten  under  the  loom,  and  then  rushed  back 
with  a  sharp  bark  again,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  I  have  done 
my  duty  by  this  feeble  creature,  you  perceive ; "  while  the 
lady-mother  of  the  kitten  sat  sunning  her  white  bosom  in 
the  window,  and  looked  around  with  a  sleepy  air  of  ex- 
pecting caresses,  though  she  was  not  going  to  take  any 
trouble  for  them. 

VII 

Although  we  know  from  her  letters  *  that  George 
Eliot  did  not  regard  the  clergy,  as  a  class,  with 
extraordinary  affection,  her  fairmindedness  was  not 
warped  from  a  generous  consideration  of  such  of 
them  as  individually  came  within  the  scope  of  her 
creations.  She  purposely  picked  out  the  best;  and 
whatever  weaknesses  they  have  are  all  on  the  side  of 
humanity,  are  the  weaknesses  they  share  with  laymen, 
and  are  not  particularly  the  vices  of  a  sect,  —  which 

1  '  Life,'  vol.  i.,  p.  31. 


Her  Sympathy  299 

would  have  made  them  objects  of  ridicule  rather  than 
subjects  for  sympathy.  She  makes  their  weaknesses 
fit  into  the  scenery ;  and  to  be  able  to  do  that  is  a 
gift  of  God,  Bnt  she  probes  far  deeper  than  that; 
for  with  all  their  amiability,  they  are  not  —  the  best 
of  them  —  weak  men,  but  firm  and  strong  upon  occa- 
sion. They  rise  to  their  opportunities ;  they  meet 
the  crises  like  true  priests. 

That  rich  Velasquez  portrait  of  Mr.  Irwine  is  the 
speaking  likeness  of  the  genial  gentleman,  dignified 
by  natural  grace  and  the  gentleness  of  birth,  which  we 
like  to  associate  with  the  other  rich  belongings  of  the 
Established  Church.  Mr.  Irwine  lived  before  the  days 
of  "  Settlements  "  and  guilds,  and  perhaps  would  not 
have  been  happy  amidst  the  busy  activities  of  a 
latter-day  city  parish.  But  he  was  of  more  real  use- 
fulness in  the  quiet  rusticity  of  his  setting  than  his 
successor,  Mr.  Ryde,  who  was,  without  doubt,  more 
"  zealous,"  but  who,  in  the  language  of  Mrs.  Poyser, 
"  was  Hke  a  dose  of  physic.  He  gripped  you  and 
worrited  you,  and  after  all  he  left  you  much  the 
same."  And  the  faces  of  the  people  of  Broxton 
and  Hayslope  did  not  brighten  at  the  approach  of 
Mr,  Ryde,  as  they  did  when  Mr,  Irwine  met  them  on 
the  highway.  They  learned  a  good  deal  more  about 
doctrines  from  Mr.  Ryde,  but  less  about  feelings  ; 
and  the  farmers  did  not  look  forward  to  their  Sundays 
with  the  pleasure  they  had  when  Mr.  Irwine  "  filled 
the  pulpit,"  and  talked  to  them  about  the  things 
they  understood. 

"  Mr.  Ryde  was  a  deal  thought  on  at  a  distance,  I  believe, 
and  he  wrote  books ;  but  as  for  mathmatics  and  the 
natur'  o'  things,  he  was  as  ignorant  as  a  woman.     He  was 


300  George  Eliot 

very  knowing  about  doctrines,  and  used  to  call  'em  the 
bulwarks  of  the  Reformation ;  but  I  've  always  mistrusted 
that  sort  o'  learning  as  leaves  folks  foolish  and  unreasonable 
about  business.  Now  Mester  Irwine  was  as  different  as 
could  be  :  as  quick  !  —  he  understood  what  you  meant  in  a 
minute;  and  he  knew  all  about  building  and  could  see 
when  you  'd  made  a  good  job.  And  he  behaved  as  much 
like  a  gentleman  to  the  farmers,  and  th'  old  women  and 
the  laborers,  as  he  did  to  the  gentry.  You  never  saw  him 
interfering  and  scolding,  and  trying  to  play  th'  emperor. 
Ah !  he  was  a  fine  man  as  ever  you  set  eyes  on ;  and  so 
kind  to  's  his  mother  and  sisters.  That  poor  sickly  Miss 
Anne  —  he  seemed  to  think  more  of  her  than  of  anybody 
else  in  the  world.  There  was  n't  a  soul  in  the  parish  had  a 
word  to  say  against  him ;  and  his  servants  stayed  with  him 
till  they  were  so  old  and  pottering  he  had  to  hire  other 
folks  to  do  their  work." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  that  was  an  excellent  way  of  preaching 
in  the  week-days ;  but  I  dare  say,  if  your  old  friend  Mr. 
Irwine  were  to  come  to  life  again,  and  get  into  the  pulpit 
next  Sunday,  you  would  be  rather  ashamed  that  he  did  n't 
preach  better  after  all  your  praise  of  him." 

"  Nay,  nay,"  said  Adam,  broadening  his  chest  and  throw- 
ing himself  back  in  his  chair,  as  if  he  were  ready  to  meet  all 
inferences,  "  nobody  has  ever  heard  me  say  Mr.  Irwine  was 
much  of  a  preacher.  He  did  n't  go  into  deep  speritial  expe- 
rience ;  and  I  know  there  's  a  deal  in  a  man's  inward  life 
as  you  can't  measure  by  the  square,  and  say  *  Do  this  and 
that  '11  follow,'  and  '  Do  that  and  this  '11  follow.'  There 's 
things  go  on  in  the  soul,  and  times  when  feelings  come 
into  you  like  a  rushing  mighty  wind,  as  the  Scripture  says, 
and  part  your  life  in  two  a' most,  so  as  you  look  back  on 
yourself  as  if  you  was  somebody  else.  Those  are  things  as 
you  can't  bottle  up  in  a  *  do  this '  and  *  do  that ; '  and  I  '11 
go  so  far  with  the   strongest  Methodist  ever  you  '11  find. 


Her  Sympathy  301 

That  shows  me  there  's  deep  speritial  things  in  religion. 
You  can't  make  much  out  wi'  talking  about  it  but  you  feel 
it.  Mr.  Irwine  did  n't  go  into  those  things :  he  preached 
short  moral  sermons  and  that  was  all.  But  then  he  acted 
up  pretty  much  to  what  he  said ;  he  did  n't  set  up  for 
being  so  different  from  other  folks  one  day,  and  then  be  as 
like  'em  as  two  peas  the  next.  And  he  made  folks  love 
him  and  respect  him,  and  that  was  better  nor  stirring  up 
their  gall  wi'  being  over-busy.  ...  I  began  to  see  as  all 
this  weighing  and  sifting  what  this  text  means  and  that 
text  means,  and  whether  folks  are  saved  all  by  God's  grace, 
or  whether  there  goes  an  ounce  o'  will  to  't  was  no  part  o'  real 
religion  at  all.  You  may  talk  o'  these  things  for  hours  on 
end,  and  you  '11  only  be  all  the  more  coxy  and  conceited 
for't.  So  I  took  to  going  nowhere  but  to  church,  and 
hearing  nobody  but  Mr.  Irwine,  for  he  said  nothing  but 
what  was  good,  and  what  you  'd  be  the  wiser  for  remember- 
ing. And  I  found  it  better  for  my  soul  to  be  humble  before 
the  mysteries  o'  God's  dealings,  and  not  be  making  a  clatter 
about  what  I  could  never  understand.  And  they  're  poor 
foolish  questions,  after  all;  for  what  have  we  got  either 
inside  or  outside  of  us  but  what  comes  from  God  ?  If  we'  ve 
got  a  resolution  to  do  right,  he  gave  it  to  us,  I  reckon,  first 
or  last ;  but  I  see  plain  enough  we  shall  never  do  it  without 
a  resolution,  and  that 's  enough  for  me." 

Yet  w^hen  the  tragedy  of  the  story  rises  in  over- 
flowing tide  upon  Adam,  Irwine  rises  with  it,  and 
saves  Adam  from  the  drowning. 

Her  disagreeable  clergymen,  like  this  Ryde,  and 
Mr,  Tyke,  in  '  Middlemarch,'  are  mentioned  only 
incidentally,  and  do  not  figure  in  the  story,  except 
as  foils  to  the  agreeable  ones,  like  Irwine  and 
Farebrother.  No  one  knew  better  than  himself  that 
Farebrother    was    far    from    being  a   model    priest. 


302  George  Eliot 

He  does  not  scruple  to  play  whist  for  the  money 
which  he  needs ;  which,  though  not  thought  ill  of 
in  the  days  of  Peel,  is  not  what  one  expects  of  an 
exemplar  in  any  day.  Yet  his  very  failings  help 
towards  his  appreciation  of  the  faults  of  others ; 
and  a  young  man  like  Fred  Vincy  can  go  to  him 
for  advice  and  direction,  who  would  nervously  shrink 
from  a  "  father  confessor  "  who  had  learned  everything 
about  sin,  not  in  life,  but  in  a  theological  seminary. 
Could  anything  be  finer  than  the  picture  of  this 
high-toned,  delicately  organized  Farebrother  swallow- 
ing his  own  feelings  and  going  to  Mary  Garth  in 
behalf  of  a  fellow  not  worthy  to  tie  his  shoestrings? 
Almost  any  boy  in  Middlemarch  would  have  said  of 
Farebrother,  had  you  asked  his  opinion,  that  he  was 
a  tip-top  fellow  and  a  brick  ;  and  a  boy's  opinion  of  a 
parson  is  not  to  be  despised. 

She  is  equally  fair  to  all  her  clergymen.  There  is 
the  broad,  tolerant  Cadwallader,  who  thought  no  evil 
of  Casaubon,  because  he  was  allowed  to  thrash  his 
stream,  and  in  whose  study  might  be  found,  not  tomes 
of  Augustine,  but  all  the  latest  fishing-tackle  ;  who 
always  saw  the  joke  of  any  satire  against  himself,  and 
who  was  an  all-round  good  fellow.  Even  Stephen 
Guest  speaks  well  of  the  high-Church  incumbent, 
Kenn. 

"I  say  anything  disrespectful  of  Dr.  Kenn?  Heaven 
forbid  1  ...  I  think  Kenn  one  of  the  finest  fellows  in  the 
world.  I  don't  care  much  about  the  tall  candlesticks  he 
has  put  on  the  communion-table,  and  I  should  n't  like  to 
spoil  my  temper  by  getting  up  to  early  prayers  every  morn- 
ing. But  he 's  the  only  man  I  ever  knew  personally  who 
seems  to  me  to  have  anything  of  the  real  apostle  in  him — a 


Her  Sympathy  303 

man  who  has  eight  hundred  a  year,  and  is  contented  with 
deal  furniture  and  boiled  beef  because  he  gives  away  two- 
thirds  of  his  income.  That  was  a  very  fine  thing  of  him  — 
taking  into  his  house  that  poor  lad  Grattan  who  shot  his 
mother  by  accident.  He  sacrifices  more  time  than  a  less 
busy  man  could  spare,  to  save  the  poor  fellow  from  getting 
into  a  morbid  state  of  mind  about  it." 

Because  this  noble-minded  woman  loved  goodness 
rather  than  any  of  the  forms  of  goodness.  You 
think  of  high  motives,  and  not  of  high  Church,  when 
you  think  of  Kenn  ;  just  as  you  think  of  what  is  best 
in  Evangelicalism,  as  part  of  what  is  best  in  all  parties, 
rather  than  what  is  typically  "  Evangelical,"  when  you 
think  of  Tryan ;  and  as  you  think  of  earnest  striving 
for  purity  in  the  dissenting  doctrines  of  Lyon,  rather 
than  the  peculiar  kind  of  purity  associated  with  the 
idea  of  Puritanism  ;  and  just  as,  finally,  in  regarding 
Dinah  Morris,  you  do  not  think  of  the  beauty  of 
Methodism,  but  of  the  beauty  of  holiness.  Her  only 
partial  failure  among  clergymen  is  Gwendolen's  uncle, 
who  is  a  little  too  much  influenced  by  county  super- 
stitions. Even  he  can  rise  nobly  to  his  opportunities, 
but  he  should  have  looked  more  closely  into  Grand- 
court's  past.  He  is  a  little  too  worldly,  even  for  a 
worldly  clergyman;  and  this  very  worldliness  might 
have  prevented  Gwendolen's  mistake  better  than  the 
innocence  of  a  less  knowing  priest. 

George  Eliot  did  not  care  for  the  Jews  especially, 
as  such,  although  she  thought  them  a  fine  old  race, 
like  the  Florentines.^     She  was  fired  with  the  idea  of. 

1  As  such,  indeed,  they  were  nothing  to  her,  and  the  gypsies  were 
less  than  nothing  ['  Life,'  vol.  J.,'pp.  172  se^.]  It  is  a  narrow  criticism 
that  finds  fault  with  the  gypsies  in  her  poem  because  of  their  dis- 
similarity from  the  known  article.     They  do  not  stand  there  for  photo- 


304  George  Eliot 

nationality;  and  she  failed,  in  '  Daniel  Deronda'  and 
the  '  Spanish  Gypsy,'  to  see  that  Christianity  was  in- 
tended to  swallow  nationality  in  universality;  that 
there  was  to  be  nothing  in  the  new  dispensation  but 
new  creatures — not  new  nations.  Judaism  is  neces- 
sarily tribal ;  there  can  be  no  converts  to  it.  You 
may  be  converted  to  Christianity ;  you  must  be  born 
into  Judaism.  But  conversion  is  a  new  birth.  There 
is  really  no  good  reason  why  Lady  Mallinger  should 
provoke  a  smile  by  her  suggestion  that  there  was  a 
society  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews,  except  that 
most  of  Lady  Mallinger's  remarks  were  regarded  as 
foolish,  and  that  there  is  little  tangible  evidence  that 
that  society  ever  accomplishes  anything.  If  the  crea- 
tor of  Daniel  Deronda  had  been  inspired  by  a  con- 
vincing Christianity,  she  would  have  grafted  her 
hero's  sentiment  for  his  hereditary  people  onto  a 
Christian  base.  Yet  Deronda,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, did  not  renounce  Christianity.  He  acknowl- 
edged that  it,  too,  had  claims  upon  him.  It  is  open 
to  the  imagination  that  his  final  belief  was  not  funda- 
mentally opposed  to  a  religion  that  had  been  born 
anew,  out  of  Judaism,  under  a  standard  destined  to 
absorb  all  religions. 

Mordecai's  doctrine  is  a  sublimated  Erastianism,  a 
high-keyed  nationalism  resting  upon  a  politico-moral, 
rather  than  on  a  religious  basis.  "  Deronda,"  we 
learn,  "  like  his  neighbors,  had  regarded  Judaism  as  a 
sort  of  eccentric  fossilized  form  which  an  accomplished 
man  might  dispense  with  studying  and  leave  to  special- 
ists." But  George  Eliot,  after  her  usual  manner,  re- 
graphic  reproductions  of  a  type,  but  are  arbitrarily  chosen  as  possible 
examples  of  truth  to  a  national  ideal.  The  actual  gypsy  is  sketched 
in  the  '  Mill  in  the  Floss.' 


Her  Sympathy  305 

gards  it  from  the  standpoint  of  a  Jew  who  still  believes 
in  his  people  ;  and  she  makes  Deronda  anxious  to 
feed  his  new  interest  by  studying  it  from  the  inside. 
Mr.  Jacobs  says  there  is  a  notable  array  of  Jews  in 
'  Daniel  Deronda,*  ^  and  the  book  awoke  the  keenest 
sympathy  among  learned  rabbis ;  which  certainly  is  a 
better  proof  that  she  wrote  understandingly  of  them 
than  the  adverse  criticism  of  those  who  have  never 
approached,  and  can  never  approach,  the  field  from 
any  other  than  an  anti-Jewish,  or,  at  the  best,  a  non- 
Jewish  position.  Think  what  we  will  of  the  futility  of  the 
main  idea  of  the  story,  the  character  of  Mordecai  stands 
out  in  breathing  colors ;  and  we  are  made  to  pity  the 
abject  hopelessness  of  his  visions  by  the  coarse  unbelief 
of  his  surroundings.  Is  it  not,  for  example,  one  of 
those  over-shrewd  mistakes  of  criticism  to  point  out 
that  the  author  erred  in  allowing  Cohen  to  transact 
business  on  the  eve  of  the  Sabbath?  Did  she  not 
purposely  make  him  do  so  by  way  of  emphasis  on  the 
infinite  distance  between  the  sordid  conditions  in  the 
life  of  the  typical  money-making,  money-lending  Jew 
and  the  visions  of  her  Mordecai  —  between  those  who 
held  the  ancient  forms  divorced  from  their  spirit,  and 
those  who  breathed  the  spirit  which  animated  the 
forms?  It  seems,  in  truth,  as  though  she  viewed  the 
theocracy  of  the  Hebrews  as  on  the  same  level  with 
the  nationalism  of  the  Italians,  and  asks  for  them  not 
a  Messiah,  but  a  Mazzini ;  and  it  is  a  little  typical  that 
Mordecai  himself  is  not  orthodox:  his  quotations  are 
not  from  the  Old  Testament,  but  from  later  writers. 
Still,  the  great  tribute  to  the  story  is  that  eminent  Jews 
to-day  are  endeavoring  to  establish  in  the  East  what 
Mordecai  died  with  visions  of  in  his  throbbing  brain, 

1  Macmillan's,  vol.  xxxvi.,  p.  loi. 
20 


306  George  Eliot 


VIII 

George  Eliot's  wit,  as  I  have  said,  is  distributed 
among  her  characters:  she  washes  her  hands  of  it, 
so  to  say,  and  makes  Mrs.  Poyser  and  Mrs.  Cadwal- 
lader  stand  for  sponsors.  It  is  different,  however, 
with  her  humor;  because  the  essential  nature  of 
humor  agrees  with  such  exquisite  fitness  with  the 
deliberative  qualities  of  her  art  that  the  portrayal 
is,  in  its  sympathetic  fulness,  almost  necessarily 
humorous. 

Humor  is  a  part  of  sympathy ;  it  is  sometimes  its 
last  touch ;  and  it  is  connected  with  love  through  its 
kinship  to  pity.  Wit  flashes,  humor  glows ;  wit  hurts, 
humor  soothes ;  wit  is  serious,  humor  gambols ;  wit 
is  swift,  humor  lingers ;  wit  is  direct,  honest,  open ; 
humor  is  vague,  sly,  wandering;  the  weapon  of  wit  is 
the  rapier;  humor  has  no  weapon,  but  its  shield  is 
sympathy.  Wit  may  be  the  mere  product  of  a  keen 
intelligence;  the  leisurely  qualities  of  humor  make  it 
a  relative  of  intellectual  culture.  Hence  it  is  natural 
that  most  of  George  Eliot's  own  talk,  as  distinct  from 
the  talk  of  her  characters,  should  be  humorous  rather 
than  witty.     Take,  for  example : 

Mr.  Barton  was  not  at  all  an  ascetic.  He  thought  the 
benefits  of  fasting  were  entirely  confined  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment dispensation. 

.  .  .  when  Lady  Assher,  Beatrice,  and  Captain  Wybrow 
entered,  all  with  that  brisk  and  cheerful  air  which  a 
sermon  is  often  observed  to  produce  when  it  is  quite 
finished. 


Her  Sympathy  307 

The  conversation  is  sometimes  quite  literary,  for  there  is 
a  flourishing  book-club,  and  many  of  the  younger  ladies 
have  carried  their  studies  so  far  as  to  have  forgotten  a  little 
German. 

Nothing  like  "  taking  "  a  few  bushes  and  ditches  for 
exorcising  a  demon ;  and  it  is  really  astonishing  that  the 
centaurs,  with  their  immense  advantages  in  this  way,  have 
left  us  so  bad  a  reputation  in  history. 

The  woman  who  manages  a  dairy  has  a  large  share  in 
making  the  rent,  so  she  may  well  be  allowed  to  have  her 
opinion  on  stock  and  their  "  keep,"  —  an  excuse  which 
strengthens  her  understanding  so  much  that  she  finds  her- 
self able  to  give  her  husband  advice  on  most  other  subjects. 

The  possession  of  a  wife  conspicuously  one's  inferior  in 
intellect  is,  like  other  high  privileges,  attended  with  a  few 
inconveniences,  and  among  the  rest,  with  the  occasional 
necessity  for  using  a  little  deception. 

He  was  unmarried,  and  had  met  all  exhortations  of  friends 
who  represented  to  him  that  a  bishop  —  /.  e.,  the  overseer 
of  an  Independent  church  and  congregation  .  .  . 

Mr.  Brooke  felt  so  much  surprise  that  he  did  not  at  once 
find  out  how  much  he  was  relieved  by  the  sense  that  he  was 
not  expected  to  do  anything  in  particular. 

.  .  .  their  opponents  made  use  of  the  same  writings  for 
different  ends,  finding  there  a  strong  warrant  for  the  divine 
right  of  kings  and  the  denunciation  of  those  who,  like  Korah, 
Dathan,  and  Abiram,  took  on  themselves  the  office  of  the 
priesthood  which  belonged  of  right  solely  to  Aaron  and 
his  sons,  or,  in  other  words,  to  men  ordained  by  the  English 
bishops. 


308  George  Eliot 

"  An  odd  man,"  as  Mrs.  Muscat  observed,  "  to  have  such 
a  gift  in  the  pulpit.  But  there  's  One  knows  better  than  we 
do,"  —  which  in  a  lady  who  rarely  felt  her  judgment  at  a 
loss,  was  a  concession  that  showed  much  piety. 

.  .  .  the  Franciscans,  who  loved  mankind,  and  hated 
the  Dominicans. 

She  was  a  great  reader  of  news,  from  the  widest-reach- 
ing politics  to  the  list  of  marriages;  the  latter,  she  said, 
giving  her  the  pleasant  sense  of  finishing  the  fashionable 
novels  without  having  read  them,  and  seeing  the  heroes 
and  heroines  happy  without  knowing  what  poor  creatures 
they  were. 

.  .  .  the  philanthropic  banker,  .  .  .  who  predominated 
so  much  in  the  town  that  some  called  him  a  Methodist, 
others  a  hypocrite,  according  to  the  resources  of  their 
vocabulary. 

They  were  saved  from  the  excesses  of  Protestantism 
by  not  knowing  how  to  read. 

Many  of  her  opinions,  such  as  those  on  church  govern- 
ment and  the  character  of  Archbishop  Laud,  seemed  too 
decided  under  every  alteration  to  have  been  arrived  at 
otherwise  than  by  a  wifely  receptiveness. 

People  who  live  at  a  distance  are  naturally  less  faulty 
than  those  immediately  under  our  own  eyes ;  and  it  seems 
superfluous,  when  we  consider  the  remote  geographical 
position  of  the  Ethiopians,  and  how  very  little  the  Greeks 
had  to  do  with  them,  to  inquire  further  why  Homer 
calls  them  "  blameless." 

The  end  of  Brooke's  pen  is  a  "  thinking  organ ;  "  so 
she  appropriately  says:  "  His  pen  found  it  such  a 
pity  ..." 


Her  Sympathy  309 

Humor  calls  for  reflective  rather  than  purely  senti- 
mental characteristics.  Not  only  in  her  power  to 
delve  below  the  surface,  but  in  her  self-restraint,  in 
the  deftness  of  her  touch,  in  her  admirable  discretion, 
is  she  the  superior  of  Dickens,  who  is  too  often  a 
mere  sentimentalist.  George  Eliot  has  not  the  trick 
of  repeating,  which  the  great  humorist  uses  past  all 
forbearance.  She  has,  so  far  as  the  outward  aspects 
of  her  humor  are  concerned,  the  Dickens  stroke  at 
its  best,  without  any  of  its  exaggerations.  Her  Mr. 
Brooke,  her  Trumbull,  all  her  minor  characters  in 
*  Middlemarch,'  are  bodied  forth  humorously,  each 
with  some  characteristic,  but  never  tiresomely  reiter- 
ated note.  She  is  a  high,  not  a  low,  comedian,  like 
Dickens.  The  memory  of  Trumbull,  trimming  his 
outlines,  and  uttering  grandiloquent  sentences,  re- 
mains with  the  reader  as  perfect  a  bit  of  portraiture 
as  the  recollection  of  Silas  Wegg,  although  the 
auctioneer  occupies  the  stage  not  one-quarter  the 
amount  of  time  the  other  worthy  holds  it.  Dalton, 
the  Donnithorne's  coachman,  appears  only  once  or 
twice,  in  '  Adam  Bede  ' : 

"  The  cap'n  's  been  ridin'  the  devil's  own  pace,"  said 
Dalton  the  coachman  —  whose  person  stood  out  in  high 
relief,  as  he  smoked  his  pipe,  against  the  stable  wall  — 
when  John   brought  up    Rattler. 

"An'  I  wish  he  'd  get  the  devil  to  do 's  grooming  for  'n," 
growled  John. 

"  Ay ;  he  'd  hev  a  deal  hamabler  groom  nor  what  he 
has  now,"  observed  Dalton;  and  the  joke  appeared  to 
him  so  good  that,  being  left  alone  upon  the  scene,  he 
continued  at  intervals  to  take  his  pipe  from  his  mouth 
in  order  to  wink  at   an   imaginary   audience,   and    shake 


310  George  Eliot 

luxuriously  with  a  silent,  ventral  laughter;  mentally  re- 
hearsing the  dialogue  from  the  beginning,  that  he  might 
recite  it  with  effect  in  the  servants'  hall. 

The  creator  of  Sam  Weller  w^ould  have  been  so  de- 
lighted with  this  Dalton  that  in  his  hands  we  should 
have  had,  instead  of  that  single  winking,  many  repe- 
titions before  many  imaginary  audiences,  just  as 
Grandfather  Smallweed  throws  a  pillow  at  Mrs.  Small- 
weed  whenever  he  looks  at  her,  and  as  Mr.  Bounderby 
never  appears  upon  the  scene  without  traducing  the 
devoted  mother  whom  he  has  miserably  pensioned 
off.  Had  the  hint  been  given  to  Boz  to  illustrate  the 
mental  attitude  of  Caleb  Garth  by  punctuating  his 
talk  with  Scriptural  diction,  the  temptation  would  have 
been  irresistible,  and  that  worthy  man  could  not  have 
opened  his  mouth  without  recalling  to  our  memories 
the  prophets  of  olden  time.  Once  is  sufficient  to 
George  Eliot,  and  it  is  done  with  so  sure  a  hand  that 
it  is  sufficient  for  us  also. 

"  Pooh !  where 's  the  use  of  asking  for  such  fellows' 
reasons?  The  soul  of  man,"  said  Caleb,with  the  deep  tone 
and  grave  shake  of  the  head  which  always  came  when  he 
used  this  phrase  —  "  the  soul  of  man,  when  it  gets  fairly 
rotten,  will  bear  you  all  sorts  of  poisonous  toadstools,  and 
no  eye  can  see  whence  came  the  seeds  thereof."  It  was 
one  of  Caleb's  quaintnesses,  that  in  his  difficulty  of  finding 
speech  for  his  thought,  he  caught,  as  it  were,  snatches  of 
diction  which  he  associated  with  various  points  of  view  or 
states  of  mind ;  and  whenever  he  had  a  feeling  of  awe,  he 
was  haunted  by  a  sense  of  biblical  phraseology,  though  he 
could  hardly  have  given  a  strict  quotation. 

Mary  Garth  is  always  hiding  her  emotion  back  of 
her  humor,  and  her  humor  never  takes  the  same  form 


Her  Sympathy  3 1 1 

twice.  Brooke  is  a  high  comedy  portrayal  of  rare 
quality, —  a  character  distinct  from  all  others,  mi- 
nutely faithful  in  details  and  not  in  the  least  exag- 
gerated. The  comic  element  does  not  reside  in  a 
constant  repetition  of  the  same  words,  but  in  his 
uniform  manner  of  repeating  various  words.  Con- 
trast — 

"  Quite  right,  Ladislaw ;  we  shall  make  a  new  thing  of 
opinion  here,"  said  Mr.  Brooke.  "  Only,  I  want  to  keep 
myself  independent  about  Reform,  you  know  :  I  don't  want 
to  go  too  far.  I  want  to  take  up  Wilberforce's  and  Romilly's 
line,  you  know,  and  work  at  Negro  Emancipation,  Criminal 
Law — that  kind  of  thing.  But  of  course  I  should  support 
Grey." 

•*  If  you  go  in  for  the  principle  of  Reform,  you  must  be 
prepared  to  take  what  the  situation  offers,"  said  Will.  "  If 
everybody  pulled  from  his  own  bit  against  everybody  else, 
the  whole  question  would  go  to  tatters." 

"  Yes,  yes,  I  agree  with  you  —  I  quite  take  that  point  of 
view.  I  should  put  it  in  that  light.  I  should  support  Grey, 
you  know.  But  I  don't  want  to  change  the  balance  of  the 
constitution,  and  I  don't  think  Grey  would." 

"  But  that  is  what  the  country  wants,"  said  Will.  *'  Else 
there  would  be  no  meaning  in  political  unions  or  any  other 
movement  that  knows  what  it 's  about.  It  wants  to  have  a 
House  of  Commons  which  is  not  weighted  with  nominees 
of  the  landed  class,  but  with  representatives  of  the  other 
interests.  And  as  to  contending  for  a  reform  short  of  that, 
it  is  like  asking  for  a  bit  of  an  avalanche  which  has  already 
begun  to  thunder." 

*'  That  is  fine,  Ladislaw :  that  is  the  way  to  put  it.  Write 
that  down,  now.  We  must  begin  to  get  documents  about 
the  feeling  of  the  country,  as  well  as  the  machine-breaking 
and  the  general  distress." 


312  George  Eliot 

"As  to  documents,"  said  Will,  "a  two-inch  card  will 
hold  plenty.  A  few  rows  of  figures  are  enough  to  deduce 
misery  from,  and  a  few  more  will  show  the  rate  at  which  the 
political  determination  of  the  people  is  growing." 

"  Good  :  draw  that  out  a  little  more  at  length,  Ladislaw. 
That  is  an  idea,  now :  write  it  out  in  the  Pioneer.  Put  the 
figures  and  deduce  the  misery,  you  know;  and  put  the 
other  figures  and  deduce  —  and  so  on.  You  have  a  way 
of  putting  things.  Burke,  now  —  when  I  think  of  Burke,  I 
can't  help  wishing  somebody  had  a  pocket-borough  to  give 
you,  Ladislaw.  You  'd  never  get  elected,  you  know.  And 
we  shall  always  want  talent  in  the  House :  reform  as  we 
will,  we  shall  always  want  talent.  That  avalanche  and  the 
thunder,  now,  was  really  a  little  like  Burke.  I  want  that 
sort  of  thing  —  not  ideas,  you  know,  but  a  way  of  putting 
them." 

with  his  speech  from  the  balcony  of  the  White  Hart: 

"  I  am  a  close  neighbor  of  yours,  my  good  friends  — 
you  've  known  me  on  the  bench  a  good  while  —  I  've  always 
gone  a  good  deal  into  public  questions  —  machinery,  now, 
and  machine-breaking  —  you  're  many  of  you  concerned 
with  machinery,  and  I  've  been  going  into  that  lately.  It 
won't  do,  you  know,  breaking  machines :  everything  must 
go  on  —  trade,  manufactures,  commerce,  interchange  of 
staples  —  that  kind  of  thing  —  since  Adam  Smith,  that  must 
go  on.  We  must  look  all  over  the  globe  :  — '  Observation 
with  extensive  view,'  must  look  everywhere,  —  'from  China 
to  Peru,'  as  somebody  says  —  Johnson,  I  think.  The  '  Ramb- 
ler,' you  know.  That  is  what  I  have  done  up  to  a  certain 
point  —  not  as  far  as  Peru ;  but  I  've  not  always  staid  at 
home  —  I  saw  it  would  n't  do.  I  've  been  in  the  Levant, 
where  some  of  your  Middlemarch  goods  go  —  and  then 
again  in  the  Baltic.     The  Baltic,  now." 


Her  Sympathy  313 

The  author  of  Pickwick  found  himself,  too  soon  in 
his  career,  in  the  unfortunate  condition  of  all  success- 
ful humorists,  in  that,  in  meeting  from  an  unreason- 
able public  a  demand  far  beyond  the  possibility  of 
even  excellence  in  the  supply,  he  was  forced  into  the 
position  of  a  professional  fun-maker,  —  a  sort  of  liter- 
ary Barnum.  And  while  it  is  not  disparaging  to 
Dickens  to  say  that  he  does  not  belong  to  the  same 
class  with  George  Eliot,  any  more  than  it  is  dispar- 
aging to  Hogarth  to  say  that  he  does  not  belong  to 
the  same  class  with  Van  Dyck,  it  is  nevertheless  true 
that  the  best  humorists  are  not  the  professional  ones. 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  a  humorist  ought  to  be  a  grave 
person.  Not  only  is  a  little  nonsense  now  and  then 
relished  by  the  gravest  men,  but  the  relish  gets  its 
grace  from  the  gravity.  Humor  is  an  appreciation  of 
incongruities,  and  this  involves  wisdom,  —  a  quality 
sadly  lacking  in  most  of  our  comic  writers. 


IX 

Every  writer  of  strength  has  attempted  to  represent 
the  feeling  of  sympathy  between  the  nature  outside 
of  us  and  the  nature  within  us,  —  that  "  pathetic 
fallacy  "  by  which  we  read  nature  in  the  tones  of  the 
mind.  If  you  visit  the  sea-shore  heavy-hearted  with 
grief,  the  ocean  has  its  andante  movements  for  you  ; 
if  in  joy,  its  allegro :  yet  it  is  the  same  ocean.  The 
dreary  monotony  of  Dorothea's  existence  is  thus  shad- 
owed forth  to  her  by  the  outlook  from  her  boudoir : 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Casaubon,  returning  from  their  wedding 
journey,  arrived  at  Lowick  Manor  in  the  middle  of  January. 
A  light  snow  was  falling  as  they  descended  at  the  door,  and 


314  George  Eliot 

in  the  morning,  when  Dorothea  passed  from  her  dressing- 
room  into  the  blue-green  boudoir  that  we  know  of,  she  saw 
the  long  avenue  of  limes  lifting  their  trunks  from  a  white 
earth,  and  spreading  white  branches  against  the  dun  and 
motionless  sky.  The  distant  flat  shrank  in  uniform  white- 
ness and  low-hanging  uniformity  of  cloud.  The  very  furni- 
ture in  the  room  seemed  to  have  shrunk  since  she  saw  it 
before :  the  stag  in  the  tapestry  looked  more  like  a  ghost 
in  his  ghostly  blue-green  world ;  the  volumes  of  polite  litera- 
ture in  the  book-case  looked  more  like  immovable  imitations 
of  books. 

But,  as  if  fearing  that  we  might  place  too  much 
stress  upon  this  personal  construction  of  nature,  we 
are  particularly  warned  in  another  place  that  the 
great  mother  is  impersonal,  too,  and  that  its  objec- 
tivity is  not  to  be  charged  at  will  by  man's  subjectivity: 

The  eighteenth  of  August  was  one  of  those  days  when 
the  sunshine  looked  brighter  in  all  eyes  for  the  gloom  that 
went  before.  .  .  .  And  yet  a  day  on  which  a  blighting  sorrow 
may  fall  upon  a  man.  For  if  it  be  true  that  Nature  at  cer- 
tain moments  seems  charged  with  a  presentiment  of  one 
individual  lot,  must  it  not  also  be  true  that  she  seems 
unmindful,  unconscious  of  another?  .  .  .  There  are  so 
many  of  us,  and  our  lots  are  so  different :  what  wonder  that 
Nature's  mood  is  often  in  harsh  contrast  with  the  great  crises 
of  our  lives  ? 

Because  of  her  predominant  humor  (which  is  an- 
other way  of  saying,  because  of  her  predominant 
sympathy)  George  Eliot  is  an  ironist  rather  than  a 
satirist.  A  mind  capable  of  vast  indignation,  yet 
checked  by  culture,  is  apt  to  find  its  outlet  in  that 
tempered  form  of  sarcasm  to  which  we  have  given 


Her  Sympathy  315 

the  name  of  irony:  the  scorn  compounds  with  the 
humor;  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  weds  the  sense  of 
What  is  Right. 

These  narrow  notions  about  debt,  held  by  the  old- 
fashioned  Tullivers,  may  perhaps  excite  a  smile  on  the 
faces  of  many  readers  in  these  days  of  wide  commercial 
views  and  wide  philosophy,  according  to  which  everything 
rights  itself  without  any  trouble  of  ours :  the  fact  that  my 
tradesman  is  out  of  pocket  by  me  is  to  be  looked  at  through 
the  serene  certainty  that  somebody  else's  tradesman  is  in 
pocket  by  somebody  else ;  and  since  there  must  be  bad 
debts  in  the  world,  why,  it  is  mere  egoism  not  to  like  that 
we  in  particular  should  make  them  instead  of  our  fellow- 
citizens.  I  am  telling  the  history  of  very  simple  people, 
who  had  never  had  any  illuminating  doubts  as  to  personal 
integrity  and  honor. 

She  is  a  master  of  ridicule,  but,  save  in  rare 
instances,  an  avoider  of  derision.  Hers  is  not  the 
"  indignatio  saeva"  of  Swift.  There  is  only  good 
nature  in  her  imitation  of  the  Wolffian  school  of 
critics : 

As  to  the  origin  of  this  song,  whether  it  came  in  its 
actual  state  from  the  brain  of  a  single  rhapsodist,  or  was 
gradually  perfected  by  a  school  or  succession  of  rhapso- 
dists,  I  am  ignorant.  There  is  a  stamp  of  unity,  of 
individual  genius,  upon  it,  which  inclines  me  to  the  former 
hypothesis,  though  I  am  not  blind  to  the  consideration 
that  this  unity  may  rather  have  arisen  from  that  consensus 
of  many  minds  which  was  a  condition  of  primitive  thought, 
foreign  to  our  modem  consciousness.  Some  will  perhaps 
think  that  they  detect  in  the  first  quatrain  an  indication  of 
a  lost  line,  which  later  rhapsodists,  failing  in  imaginative 
vigor,  have    supplied   by  the  feeble    device   of  iteration : 


3i6  George  Eliot 

others,  however,  may  rather  maintain  that  this  very  itera- 
tion is  an  original  felicity,  to  which  none  but  the  most 
prosaic  minds  can  be  insensible. 

In  this  connection,  it  is  amusing  to  watch  the 
flight  of  her  Parthian  arrow  at  those  who  claimed  for 
that  remarkable  personage,  Mr.  Liggins,  the  author- 
ship of  '  Adam  Bede' : 

He  .  .  .  produced  a  work  on  the  *  Cultivation  of  Green 
Crops  and  the  Economy  of  Cattle  Feeding '  which  won 
him  high  congratulations  at  agricultural  meetings ;  but  in 
Middlemarch  admiration  was  more  reserved :  most  per- 
sons there  were  inclined  to  believe  that  the  merit  of  Fred's 
authorship  was  due  to  his  wife,  since  they  had  never 
expected  Fred  Vincy  to  write  on  turnips  and  mangel- 
wurzel. 

But  when  Mary  wrote  a  little  book  for  her  boys,  called 
'Stories  of  Great  Men,  taken  from  Plutarch,'  and  had  it 
printed  and  published  by  Grip  &  Co.,  Middlemarch,  every 
one  in  the  town  was  willing  to  give  the  credit  of  this  work 
to  Fred,  observing  that  he  had  been  to  the  University, 
"where  the  ancients  were  studied,"  and  might  have  been  a 
clergyman  if  he  had  chosen. 

In  this  way  it  was  made  clear  that  Middlemarch  had 
never  been  deceived,  and  that  there  was  no  need  to  praise 
anybody  for  writing  a  book,  since  it  was  always  done  by 
somebody  else. 

A  sense  of  humor  is,  after  all,  the  principal  form 
of  common-sense.  Moreover,  it  is  the  saving  sense 
which  distinguishes  common  from  vulgar  sense,  and 
is  as  remarkable  for  what  it  hinders  as  for  what  it 
does.  Among  other  things,  it  prevents  an  author 
from  sprinkling   his   pages  with  villains.     "  Plotting 


Her  Sympathy  317 

covetousness,"  says  George  Eliot,  "and  deliberate 
contrivance,  in  order  to  accomplish  a  selfish  end, 
are  nowhere  abundant  but  in  the  world  of  the  drama- 
tist :  they  demand  too  intense  a  mental  action  for  many 
of  our  fellow-parishioners  to  be  guilty  of  them." 
There  are,  strictly  speaking,  no  villains  among  her 
leading  characters.  Tito  does  not  set  out  to  be  one ; 
his  is  not  a  predetermined  villainy;  it  comes  late, 
and  is  not  so  much  the  result  of  acute  maliciousness 
as  it  is  of  complexities  brought  about  in  large  part 
by  love  of  ease  and  softness  of  temper.  He  does 
not  wish  harm  to  others ;  he  wishes  good  to  himself 
so  steadfastly  that,  in  the  exclusiveness  of  this  passion, 
the  harm  to  others  follows.  It  all  depends  on  the 
sense  of  obligation,  —  an  all-essential  sense  which 
Tito  neglects,  not  because  of  active  malice,  but  of 
irksomeness  under  the  burden  which  the  obligation 
lays  upon  his  pleasure-loving  nature.  He  is  driven 
into  malice  only  by  the  circumstances  of  his  deceit ; 
which  is  quite  different  from  the  lago  point  of  action* 
Raffles  and  Lapidoth  are  more  dead-beats  than 
villains.  Dunstan  Cass  is  lost  sight  of  early  in  the 
story,  and  Dolfo  Spini  is  too  stupid  in  his  wickedness 
to  merit  the  title.  The  primal  fire  of  Grandcourt's 
villainy  is  burnt  out  when  the  story  opens,  and  the 
base  plotters  in  '  Romola,'  are,  like  the  disagreeable 
clergymen,  kept  in  the  background. 


X 

The  novel  is  the  youngest  of  the  arts  of  writing, 
and  its  superlative  force  lies  in  its  inclusion  of  the 
older  ones.     It  is  able  to  present  what  is  essential  in 


3 1 8  George  Eliot 

Bacon  and  Kant  to  myriads  who  never  read  philos- 
ophy in  the  abstract.  Its  form  permits  it  to  grasp 
subtle  aspects  of  living  truths  which  even  a  twentieth- 
century  Shakspere  could  not  enforce  in  drama.  Its 
clothing  of  prose  allows  an  extension  of  delineation 
not  possible  in  any  readable  style  of  verse.  Think, 
then,  of  the  power  of  the  novelist  learned  in  philos- 
ophy, with  the  dramatic  instinct,  and  possessing  all 
the  weapons  of  a  prose  armory.  Raise  that  thought 
to  the  conception  of  the  use  of  such  a  power  in  be- 
half of  all  suffering  men  and  women,  and  George 
Eliot  stands  revealed  as  its  realization.  Cervantes, 
Scott,  Fielding,  even  such  lesser  lights  as  Goldsmith 
and  Le  Sage,  are  placed  before  her  ;  but  unless  we 
hold  our  vision  at  the  range  of  manners,  and  prefer 
to  consider  the  playful  buoyancy  of  imagination 
superior  to  its  spiritual  depth,  we  must  exalt 
George  Eliot,  with  all  her  faults,  to  a  position  not 
yet  reached  by  any  other. 

Hers  was  an  ardent  age,  —  the  age  of  a  new  birth 
in  science,  with  wide-spreading  results  in  art;  the 
age  of  '  Modern  Painters,'  and  '  Sartor  Resartus,'  and 
of  a  Tennyson  rebellious  against  all  commonplace 
acceptances.  She  knew  Fielding's  place,  just  as  she 
knew  Dickens's,  and  was  glad  to  take  a  holiday  with 
him  as  she  might 

A  great  historian,  as  he  insisted  on  calling  himself,  who 
had  the  happiness  to  be  dead  a  hundred  and  twenty  years 
ago,  .  .  .  glories  in  his  copious  remarks  and  digressions 
as  the  least  imitable  part  of  his  work,  and  especially  in 
those  initial  chapters  .  .  .  where  he  seems  to  bring  his 
arm-chair  to  the  proscenium  and  chat  with  us  in  all  the 
lusty  ease  of  his  fine  English.     But  Fielding  lived  when  the 


Her  Sympathy  319 

days  were  longer  (for  time,  like  money,  is  measured  by 
our  needs),  when  summer  afternoons  were  spacious,  and 
the  clock  ticked  slowly  in  the  winter  evenings. 


Surely  all  other  leisure  is  hurry  compared  with  a  sunny 
walk  through  fields  from  *'  afternoon  church,"  as  such  walks 
used  to  be  in  those  old  leisurely  times,  when  the  boat, 
gliding  sleepily  along  the  canal,  was  the  newest  locomotive 
wonder ;  when  Sunday  books  had  most  of  them  old  brown 
leather  covers,  and  opened  with  remarkable  precision 
always  in  one  place.  Leisure  is  gone  —  gone  where  the 
spinning-wheels  are  gone,  and  the  pack-horses,  and  the 
slow  wagons,  and  the  peddlers  who  brought  bargains  to 
the  door  on  sunny  afternoons.  Ingenious  philosophers  tell 
you,  perhaps,  that  the  great  work  of  the  steam-engine  is  to 
create  leisure  for  mankind.  Do  not  believe  them  ;  it  only 
creates  a  vacuum  for  eager  thought  to  rush  in.  Even  idle- 
ness is  eager  now  —  eager  for  amusement ;  prone  to  excur- 
sion trains,  art  museums,  periodical  literature,  and  exciting 
novels;  prone  even  to  scientific  theorizing,  and  cursory 
peeps  through  microscopes.  Old  Leisure  was  quite  a  dif- 
ferent personage ;  he  read  only  one  newspaper,  innocent 
of  leaders,  and  was  free  from  that  periodicity  of  sensations 
which  we  call  post-time.  He  was  a  contemplative,  rather 
stout  gentleman,  of  excellent  digestion,  of  quiet  per- 
ceptions, undiseased  by  hypothesis ;  happy  in  his  inability 
to  know  the  causes  of  things,  preferring  the  things  them- 
selves. He  lived  chiefly  in  the  country,  among  pleasant 
seats  and  homesteads,  and  was  fond  of  sauntering  by  the 
fruit-tree  wall,  and  scenting  the  apricots  when  they  were 
warmed  by  the  morning  sunshine,  or  of  sheltering  himself 
under  the  orchard  boughs  at  noon,  when  the  summer  pears 
were  falling.  He  knew  nothing  of  week-day  services,  and 
thought  none  the  worse  of  the  Sunday  sermon  if  it  allowed 
him  to  sleep  from  the  text  to  the  blessing — liking  the  after- 


320  George  Eliot 

noon  service  best,  because  the  prayers  were  the  shortest 
and  not  ashamed  to  say  so ;  for  he  had  an  easy,  jolly  con- 
science, broad-backed  like  himself,  and  able  to  carry  a 
great  deal  of  beer  or  port  wine  —  not  being  made  squeam- 
ish by  doubts  and  qualms  and  lofty  aspirations.  Life  was 
not  a  task  to  him,  but  a  sinecure ;  he  fingered  the  guineas 
in  his  pocket,  and  ate  his  dinners,  and  slept  the  sleep  of 
the  irresponsible ;  for  had  he  not  kept  up  his  charter  by 
going  to  church  on  the  Sunday  afternoon? 

Fine  old  Leisure  !  Do  not  be  severe  upon  him,  and 
judge  him  by  our  modern  standard;  he  never  went  to 
Exeter  Hall,  or  heard  a  popular  preacher,  or  read  *  Tracts 
for  the  Times,'  or  '  Sartor  Resartus.' 


Of  course  one  feels  the  strain  in  such  an  atmosphere, 
and  it  is  for  relief  that  critics  fall  back  on  the  "  fine  old 
leisure  "  of  the  previous  age. 

Fielding,  as  a  character,  was  not  a  new  force  in 
literature,  although  the  nature  of  his  work  was  de- 
liciously  so.  He  belongs  to  the  Samuel  Johnson 
type  of  man,  —  blunt,  honest,  prejudiced,  rough  in 
judgment,  but  tender  of  heart ;  and  he  is  followed,  at  a 
a  more  or  less  respectful  distance,  by  the  Levers,  the 
Lovers,  and  the  Marryats.  He  is,  next  to  Cervantes, 
the  most  complete  of  the  comic  Homers.  His  wide 
sympathies  are  reckoned  among  the  proofs  of  his 
greatness,  but  can  they  be  seriously  compared  with 
the  minute  conscientiousness  of  George  Eliot's?  Are 
they  not  merely  a  boisterous  goodfellowship,  a  bluff 
heartiness  of  liking  for  downright  English  traits  of 
outspokenness,  which  carries  with  it  a  corresponding 
hatred  for  the  opposites?  The  fine  qualities  of  Tom 
Jones  are  emphasized  by  the  contrasting  mean  quali- 
ties of  Bilfil,  —  by  the  qualitiesof  a  hypocritical  sneak 


Her  Sympathy  321 

and  coward.  All  the  sympathy  is  for  the  major,  there 
is  none  for  the  minor,  figure.  But  we  know  how 
George  Eliot  treats  hypocrisy  in  Bulstrode,  and  how 
her  contrasting  color  is  not  wholly  black  because 
what  it  is  contrasted  with  is  not  wholly  white.  It  seems 
to  me  that  her  method  is  the  more  subtly  humorous 
as  well  as  the  more  deeply  sympathetic;  the  humor 
getting  its  flavor  from  the  sympathy. 

Those  others  were,  first,  story-tellers,  then  delinea- 
tors of  character.  They  had  great  art  and  much  sym- 
pathy ;  and  the  enjoyment  they  gave  was  hearty, 
direct,  and  simple.  Judged  by  the  standards  them- 
selves set,  before  George  Eliot's  day,  George  Eliot's 
work  fails  ;  but  as  combining  poetical  insight,  religious 
feeling,  philosophical  breadth,  humorous  portrayal, 
and  a  deep  loving  sympathy,  that  work  stands  apart, 
not  only  by  reason  of  its  positive  qualities,  but  as 
pointing  the  way  to  all  future  art  of  the  highest  worth 
—  the  art  which  has  to  do  with  the  most  abundant 
life. 

She  has  invention.  Some  of  her  plots  are  quite  com- 
plicated. But  she  was  the  first  to  illustrate  the  over- 
whelming importance  of  the  relationship  of  the  men 
and  women  of  a  story  to  the  natural  history  of  all 
men  and  women  —  her  world  the  microcosm,  the  world 
outside  the  macrocosm.  This  was  science  ;  it  was  the 
correlation  of  forces  ;  it  was  Comtism,  if  you  please ; 
but  it  was  life.  The  mere  device  of  plot  is  mere 
cleverness,  compared  with  the  power  to  develop  the 
embryonic  principles  of  life  in  the  blessed  sunlight  of 
eternal  law.  It  is  not  as  if  she  placed  the  natural 
history  of  mankind  on  a  plane  superior  to  and  apart 
from  the  history  of  her  hero  and  heroine :  violently 
would  that  have  divorced  her  philosophy  from  her 

21 


322  George  Eliot 

art,  and  translated  her  from  a  George  Eliot,  to  be 
known  forevermore  as  the  creator  of  '  Adam  Bede ' 
and  '  Silas  Marner,'  back  to  the  obscure  essayist  of 
the  Westminster  Review.  She  probed  —  as  no  one 
before  her  did  —  far  deeper  than  that.  She  showed 
that  romance,  so  far  from  dying  in  the  new  light, 
took  on  deeper  colors  ;  that  the  inter-relationship  of 
cause  and  effect,  desire  and  will,  the  I  and  the  Other 
than  I,  not  only  afforded  scientific  phenomena,  but  by 
the  grasp  it  had  on  the  human  heart  and  conscience, 
was  composed  of  the  very  passionate  inmost  soul  of 
poetry,  —  of  the  stuff  of  its  creation  and  the  breath  of 
its  life.  She  did  not  reduce  romance  to  a  science ; 
nor  was  it  her  mission  to  illustrate  the  romance  of 
science.  The  mystery  of  life  is  not  explained  in  her 
works.  There  is  no  Be-AU  and  End-All  system 
dreamt  of  in  her  philosophy.  But  her  greatness  is 
that  she  subordinates  the  finite  parts  to  the  infinite 
whole ;  and  her  music,  though  cradled  in  pain,  is  a 
true  music  of  the  spheres. 


JANE    AUSTEN 
«r//£    EXQUISITE    TOUCH' 


JANE    AUSTEN 

''THE    EXQUISITE    TOUCH'* 
A.  — HER  PLACE 


It  is  not,  and  yet  again  it  is,  because  the  three 
authors  whose  names  adorn  these  pages  happen  to 
have  been  women  that  they  are  the  subjects  of  our 
thought.  This  is  not  an  attempt  to  add  another 
volume  to  the  large  library  of  female  appreciations. 
These  names  would  the  rather  stand  as  a  protest 
against  that  peculiar  frivolity  of  criticising  a  woman's 
work  in  the  light  of  her  gender.  But  beyond  this 
lies  a  fundamental  truth,  which  prompts  the  general 
recognition  of  congenital  differences  in  sex,  which 
manifest  themselves  in  the  colors  or  forms  of  the  work 
accomplished.  The  sexes  are  spiritually  as  well  as 
physically  complementary.  A  good  woman  novelist 
must  have  something  of  a  man  in  her,  for  she  must 
have  judgment  and  strength :  a  good  male  novelist 
must  have  something  of  a  woman  in  him,  for  he  must 
have  sympathy,  which  tempers  judgment  and  justifies 
strength. 

The  wise  critic,  however,  will  not  repeat  the  error  of 
Lewes  in  dwelling  on  the  differences  so  long  that  the 
more  notable  similarities  are  lost  sight  of:  he  will 
simply  acknowledge  the  force  of  the  differences  when, 


326  J^iie  Austen 

as  in  the  case  of  our  present  study,  they  are  evident, 
and  will  not  regard  them  in  any  fanciful  way  as  divid- 
ing into  permanent  separate  camps  the  intellectual 
conceptions  of  men  and  women.  Each  of  these 
women  is  chosen  because  she  stands  a  determinate 
quality  in  literature ;  and  the  three  are  considered 
in  one  book,  not  because  together  they  form  an 
interesting  study  of  the  distinctly  feminine  nature  of 
these  qualities,  but  because  each  of  the  qualities  is  of 
supreme  importance  in  itself:  yet  none  of  these  would 
have  filled  her  place  had  she  not  had  the  essen- 
tial characteristics  of  her  sex ;  hence  it  is,  indirectly 
and  yet  fundamentally,  because  of  the  womanhood 
that  the  subjects  attract  our  notice.  Guizot  confessed 
that  he  found  French  and  German  fiction  too  artificial 
for  his  taste,  and  commended  the  English  novels  as 
more  natural,  "  particularly  those  written  by  women." 
And  of  Miss  Austen  he  says,  one  must  go  back  to 
the  great  Athenian  age  for  a  parallel.^  Scott,  writing 
of  the  portraiture  of  actual  society,  thinks  the  women 
"  do  this  better."  ^  With  men  there  is  "  too  much 
attempt  to  put  the  reader  exactly  up  to  the  thoughts 
and  sentiments  of  the  parties."  Upon  these  dicta,  — 
the  grave  historian  and  the  splendid  romancer,  the 
austere  thinker  and  the  enthusiastic  poet  each  em- 
phasizing the  undeniable  point  —  we  fall  back  for  our 

1  '  Lady  Susan,  the  Watsons.'  With  a  Memoir  by  the  Nephew, 
J.  E.  Austen- Leigh.     Boston  :  Little,  Brown,  &  Co.,  1899,  p.  293. 

2  •  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,'  by  J.  G.  Lockhart,  Esq., 
Edinburgh  :  Adam  and  Charles  Black,  1878,  p.  618.  Sir  Walter  was 
always  complimentary  to  the  ladies.  "  Miss  Lucy  Aikin  tells  a  pretty 
story,"  says  Mrs.  Ritchie,  in  her  '  Book  of  Sibyls,'  "  of  Scott  meeting 
Mrs.  Barbauld  at  dinner  and  telling  her  that  it  was  to  her  he  owed 
his  poetic  gift."  He  said  that  Miss  Edgeworth's  Irish  tales  gave  him 
his  hint  for  the  Waverleys,  and  even  praised  Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith's 
now  forgotten  novels,  including  them  in  his  '  British  Novelists.' 


Her  Place  327 

support  in  claiming  that  it  is  not  as  woman's  work 
that  we  wish  to  regard  Miss  Austen's,  Miss  Bronte's, 
and  George  Eliot's,  even  though  much  of  that  which 
makes  the  work  notable  is  distinctively  womanly. 


II 

Charlotte  Bronte  was  a  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness, 
—  crying  for  pain,  crying  unrestrained.  It  was  the  first 
note  of  pure  personality —  pure  in  every  sense —  heard 
in  our  literature ;  and  it  was  the  more  startling  be- 
cause it  was  a  woman's  voice.  George  Eliot  felt  this 
passionate  emotion  in  a  larger  way.  The  sympathetic 
tendencies  of  her  thought  were  gradually  developed 
until  the  personality  of  emotion  was  absorbed  into  a 
generalized  sympathy,  and  the  passion  passed  into 
compassion.  She  thus  became  the  first  (if  not  in 
time,  at  least  in  power)  of  altruists  in  fiction,  —  the 
first  to  give  the  fullest  expression  to  that  throbbing 
sense  of  the  painful  pressure  of  universal  life  upon 
the  individual  conscience  which  is  now  felt  by  all 
upon  whom  her  message  has  fallen.  Miss  Austen's 
right  of  admittance  to  this  fellowship,  bearing  its 
own  unassailable  credentials,  we  hope  to  make  plain 
in  the  present  essay. 


Ill 

We  shall  perhaps  the  better  understand  both  Miss 
Bronte  and  George  Eliot  by  considering  the  other 
lady  out  of  her  chronological  order,  and  it  is  not 
without  purpose  that  this  place  has  been  reserved 
for   her.     If  we  were   to   yield  to  the  voice  of  the 


328  Jarie  Austen 

charmer  —  and  so  it  always  sounds  when  Mr.  Birrell 
calls  —  this  relegation  would  be  for  the  same  reason 
that  the  bishop  is  made  to  march  at  the  end  of  the 
procession,  namely,  that  the  first  shall  be  last;  for 
Mr.  Birrell  concludes  his  monograph  on  Charlotte 
Bronte  thus: 

"  It  would  hardly  be  safe  to  name  Miss  Austen,  Miss 
Bronte,  and  George  Eliot  as  the  three  greatest  women 
novelists  the  United  Kingdom  can  boast,  and  were  one  to 
go  on  and  say  that  the  alphabetical  order  of  their  names 
is  also  the  order  of  merit,  it  would  be  necessary  to  seek 
police  protection,  and  yet  surely  it  is  so. 

"  The  test  of  merit  for  a  novel  can  be  nothing  else  than 
the  strength  and  probable  endurance  of  its  pleasure-giving 
capacity.  ...  To  be  read  always,  everywhere,  and  by  all 
is  the  impossible  ideal.  Who  fails  least  is  the  greatest 
novelist.  A  member  of  the  craft  may  fairly  enough  pray  in 
aid  of  his  immortality,  his  learning,  his  philosophy,  his  width 
of  range,  his  depth  of  passion,  his  height  of  feeling,  his 
humor,  his  style,  or  any  mortal  thing  he  can  think  of;  but 
unless  his  novels  give  pleasure  and  are  likely  to  go  on  giv- 
ing pleasure,  his  grave  is  dug,  and  sooner  or  later,  probably 
sooner,  will  be  occupied  by  another  dead  novelist. 

"  Applying  this  test,  we  ask  —  what  pleasure-giving  ele- 
ments do  Miss  Austen's  novels  now  possess  which  they  will 
not  possess  a  century  hence  ?  None  !  If  they  please  now, 
they  will  please  then,  unless  in  the  meantime  some  catastro- 
phe occurs  to  human  nature,  which  shall  rob  the  poor  thing 
of  the  satisfaction  she  has  always  hitherto  found  in  contem- 
plating her  own  visage.  Faiths,  fashions,  thrones,  parlia- 
ments, late  dinners,  may  all  fade  away  :  we  may  go  forward, 
we  may  go  back ;  recall  political  economy  from  Saturn,  or 
Mr.  Henry  George  from  New  York:  crown  Mr.  Parnell 
King  of  Ireland,  or  hang  him  high  as  Haman  :  but  fat  Mary 


Her  Place  329 

Bennet,  the  elder  {sic)  Miss  Bates,  Mr.  Rushworth,  and 
Mr.  John  Thorpe  must  always  remain  within  call,  being  not 
accidental,  but  essential  figures."  ^ 

But  if  the  reasons  brought  forward  in  the  foregoing 
studies  for  the  supremacy  of  Miss  Austen's  successors 
are  valid,  this  preference  of  Mr.  Birrell's  will  be  re- 
garded merely  as  a  preference  —  which  is  quite  apart 
from  a  critical  estimate ;  and  we  shall  find  other  than 
ritual  reasons  for  putting  Miss  Austen  last. 

This  present  is,  indeed,  the  "  strenuous  life."  The 
personal  yet  noble  cry  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  and  the 

.  .  .  pulses  stirred  to  generosity 
In  deeds  of  daring  rectitude 

of  George  Eliot  are  living  forces  to-day,  which,  be- 
cause of  the  later  disturbances,  does  not  feel  the  calm 
air  of  Miss  Austen's  time.  Miss  Austen  had  to  do 
with  manners  ;  we  have  advanced  to  methods.  She 
was  content  with  picturing  the  life  she  saw;  we 
search  for  the  philosophy  which  will  explain  it.  Her 
view  was  from  the  level  of  her  own  age ;  ours  from 
that  of  all  the  ages.  Yet  the  very  laxity  of  her  day 
was  in  part  the  reason  for  the  energy  of  this,  and  we 
cannot  hope  to  even  approach  a  comprehension  of 
the  full  purpose  of  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  until  we  have  considered  the  apparent  lack 
of  purpose  of  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth.  We 
have  reserved  Miss  Austen,  then,  that  in  studying  her 
works,  with  the  more  modern  "  notes  "  of  her  suc- 
cessors still  ringing  in  our  ears,  we  may  more  clearly 
understand  the  great  differences  between  that  time 

1  '  Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte,'  by  Augustine  Birrell.  London : 
Walter  Scott,  1887,  pp.  175-176. 


330  Jaiie  Austen 

and  this  and  find  therein  their  partial  explanation. 
And  as  Miss  Austen's  name  is  associated  with  the 
lighter  things  of  life,  may  not  the  consideration  of 
her  in  this  place  be  offered  as  a  dessert  after  the  more 
solid  courses  which  have  preceded? 


IV 

Just  as  Charlotte  Bronte's  and  George  Eliot's  were 
new  voices  in  literature,  so  also  was  Jane  Austen's. 
The  earlier  novelists  were  the  successors  of  the  Essay- 
ists. Now,  the  Essayists  were,  first  and  last,  moral- 
ists. They  meant  to  rebuke  the  vices  of  an  age 
become  hideously  corrupt  through  the  subjection  of 
those  whose  office  is,  by  its  nature  and  by  the  terms 
of  its  commission,  to  rebuke  vice,  to  the  class  which 
could  thus  feed  unchecked  on  what  went  unrebuked. 
The  social  position  of  the  lower  clergy  in  the  first 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  somewhat  below 
that  of  the  upper  servants  in  a  great  man's  house.^ 
Forced  to  consort  with  the  basest  elements  of  society, 
they,  who  should  have  been  the  champions  of  moral 
living,  were  no  better  than  their  companions.  As  for 
their  superiors  in  the  Church,  they  were  either  them- 
selves a  part  of  the  aristocratic  class  and  submerged 
in  its  coarse  depravities,  or  were  so  closely  attached 
to  it  as  not  to  be  able  to  influence  it  from  any  van- 
tage point  of  morality;  and  were,  when   not  them- 

1  The  innocence  of  Abraham  Adams,  Fielding  says,  was  not  so 
o-eniarkable  "  in  a  countrj*  parson  "  as  it  would  have  been  "  in  a 
gentleman  who  had  passed  his  life  behind  the  scenes ;  "  thus  recog- 
nizing the  clear  distinction  of  that  time  between  the  class  to  which 
even  a  learned  parson  like  Adams  belonged  and  the  class  of  "  gentle- 
man." 


Her  Place  331 

selves  actively  vicious,  at  least  negatively  so  in  their 
cold  and  ineffectual  worldliness.  Every  reader  of  the 
Spectator  will  remember  Addison's  picture  of  the 
country  parson  of  that  time  at  his  best,  —  Sir  Roger 
de  Coverley's  domestic  chaplain : 

"  My  chief  Companion,  when  Sir  Roger  is  diverting  him- 
self in  the  Woods  or  the  Fields,  is  a  very  venerable  Man  who 
is  ever  with  Sir  Roger,  and  has  lived  at  his  House  in  the 
Nature  of  a  Chaplain  above  thirty  years.  This  Gentleman 
is  a  Person  of  good  Sense  and  some  Learning,  of  a  very 
regular  Life  and  obliging  Conversation.  He  heartily  loves 
Sir  Roger,  and  knows  that  he  is  very  much  in  the  old 
Knight's  Esteem,  so  that  he  lives  in  the  Family  rather  as  a 
Relation  than  a  Dependant.  ...  As  I  was  walking  with 
him  last  Night,  he  asked  me  how  I  liked  the  good  Man, 
whom  I  have  just  now  mentioned?  and  without  staying  for 
my  Answer  told  me,  That  he  was  afraid  of  being  insulted 
with  Latin  and  Greek  at  his  own  Table ;  for  which  reason 
he  desired  a  particular  Friend  of  his  at  the  University  to 
find  him  out  a  Clergyman  rather  of  plain  Sense  than  much 
Learning,  of  a  good  Aspect,  a  clear  Voice,  a  sociable 
Temper,  and,  if  possible,  a  Man  that  understood  a  little 
of  Backgammon.  ...  At  his  first  settling  with  me,  I  made 
him  a  Present  of  all  the  good  Sermons  which  have  been 
printed  in  English,  and  only  begg'd  of  him  that  every  Sun- 
day he  would  pronounce  one  of  them  in  the  Pulpit.  Ac- 
cordingly, he  has  digested  them  into  such  a  Series,  that 
they  follow  one  another  naturally,  and  make  a  continued 
System  of  practical  Divinity. 

"  As  Sir  Roger  was  going  on  in  his  Story,  the  Gentleman 
we  were  talking  of  came  up  to  us ;  and  upon  the  Knight's 
asking  him  who  preached  to-morrow,  told  us  the  Bishop  of 
St.  Asaph  in  the  Morning,  and  Dr.  South  in  the  Afternoon. 
He  then  showed  us  his  List  of  Preachers  for  the  whole 


332  J^i^G  Austen 

Year,  where  I  saw  with  a  great  deal  of  Pleasure,  Archbishop 
Tillotson,  Bishop  Saunderson,  Doctor  Barrow,  Doctor 
Calatny,  with  Several  living  Authors  who  have  published  dis- 
courses of  Practical  Divinity.  ...  A  Sermon  repeated 
after  this  Manner,  is  like  the  Composition  of  a  Poet  in  the 
mouth  of  a  graceful  Actor. 

"  I  could  heartily  wish  that  more  of  our  country  Clergy 
would  follow  this  Example;  and  instead  of  wasting  their 
Spirits  in  laborious  Compositions  of  their  own,  would  en- 
deavor after  a  handsome  Elocution,  and  all  those  other 
Talents  that  are  proper  to  enforce  what  has  been  penned 
by  greater  Masters.  This  would  not  only  be  more  easy  to 
themselves,  but  more  edifying  to  the  People." 

For  this  same  parson  at  his  worst,  we  have  only  to 
refer  to  the  novelists  who  succeeded  Addison,  whose 
TruUibers  and  Thwackums  and  Jack  Quicksets,  and 
the  knavish  curate  who  figures  in  Chapter  IX.  of 
'  Roderick  Random,'  ^  and  the  clerical  gentlemen  we 
are  invited  to  look  upon  at  the  Visitation  dinner  in 
Letter  LVIII.  of  the  'Citizen  of  the  World,'  and 
such  "  ministers  "  as  the  splay-footed,  tobacco-stained 
priest  called  upon  to  read  the  marriage  service  over 
Harriet  Byron,  and  the  "  buck  parson "  who,  in 
'  Belinda,'  first  taught  my  Lord  Delacour  to  drink, 
are,  one  would  say  after  reading  Bishop  Burnett's  un- 
prejudiced testimony,  not  exaggerated  delineations. 

^  This  "  young  fellow  in  a  rusty  gown  and  cassock,"  with  an  ex- 
ciseman for  a  partner,  is  soon  perceived  to  be  a  sharper  at  cards, 
stripping  the  opponents  "  of  all  their  cash  in  a  very  short  time."  "  I 
did  not  at  all  wonder,"  says  Roderick,  "  to  find  a  cheat  in  canonicals, 
this  being  a  character  frequent  in  my  own  country;  but  I  was  scan- 
dalized at  the  indecency  of  his  behavior  and  the  bawdy  songs  which  he 
sung."  The  whole  chapter,  introducing  as  it  does,  one  of  the  upper 
clergy  ("  this  rosy  son  of  the  Church  ")  is  a  striking  commentary  on 
the  times. 


Her  Place  333 

This  corruption,  permeating  society,  deadened  all 
spiritual  life,  and  fastened  upon  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  low-water  mark  of  materialism.  Vice  among 
the  robust  Northern  races,  taking  on  its  coarser  forms, 
becomes  a  sin  against  taste,  as  well  as  a  transgression 
against  morals,  and  on  this  score  the  urbane  Addison 
attacked  it  in  his  Essays.  The  vulgarity,  the  rowdy- 
ism, these  scandalous  indecorums,  and  the  graceless 
foppery  of  all  this  profligacy,  he  set  himself  against; 
and  it  is  a  clear  indication  of  the  unspiritual  atmos- 
phere of  the  time  that  its  chief  moralist  should,  in 
his  metrical  criticism  of  the  poets,  never  rise  beyond 
the  standpoint  of  taste.  He  who  was  beyond  all  else 
polished  finds  damning  qualities  in  Chaucer  because 
of  his  "  ««polished  strain  ;  "  and  this  is  the  criticism 
in  which  he  disparages  Spenser  and  makes  no  men- 
tion at  all  of  Shakspere.  Addison  was  the  high 
priest  of  Conventionalism,  and  was  the  true  son  of  an 
age  which  could  make  "  manners,  good  breeding,  and 
the  graces,"  of  more  consequence  than  honor  and 
justice,  in  the  calm  language  of  Lord  Chesterfield  to 
his  son.  But  the  Spectator  undoubtedly  had  a  civil- 
izing influence,  and  deserves  the  reputation  it  enjoyed 
of  "  making  morality  fashionable."  That  it  was  a 
calculating  morality,  of  the  sort  later  exemplified  in 
Benjamin  Franklin,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  with  good 
taste  and  manners  as  the  main  lever,  it  was  impossible 
to  have  lifted  it  beyond  a  practical  level  in  a  materi- 
alistic age.  Addison  measures  the  loftiest  flights  by 
a  standard  of  imagination  in  \^\i\z\\  form  regulates  all 
the  by-laws.  He  thinks  Sin  and  Death  of  too 
chimerical  an  existence  to  be  proper  actors  in  an 
Epic  poem.  Even  his  famous  Hymn  does  not  lift 
up,  it  simply  pleases ;  it  addresses  itself  to  our  fancy 


334  ]^^^  Austen 

as  a  kind  of  poetical  appendage  to  Butler's  Analogy ; 
and  Haydn's  tune,  to  which  it  is  usually  sung,  con- 
nects it  in  our  thought  with  Philip  Wakem's  criticism 
of  that  master's  '  Creation,'  — "  sugared  compla- 
cency and  flattering  make-believe,  as  if  it  were  written 
for  the  birth-day  f6te  of  a  German  grand  duke."  In- 
deed, a  Bolingbroke  of  his  day  might  have  said  to  its 
author  what  that  satirical  statesman  later  told  White- 
field,  on  hearing  him  preach  in  Lady  Huntingdon's 
drawing-room,  —  that  "  he  had  done  great  justice  to 
the  Divine  attributes  in  his  discourse."  Although 
powerfully  moved  (moved  but  not  overwhelmed,  in 
Taine's  phrase)  by  his  greatest  simile  of  the  angel 
who  "  rides  in  the  whirlwind  and  directs  the  storm," 
we  can  never  quite  dissociate  the  picture  from  that 
other  picture  of  Thackeray's,  representing  this  good 
angel  flying  off  with  Mr.  Addison  and  landing  him  in 
the  place  of  Commissioner  of  Appeals  as  his  reward 
for  writing  the  party  poem  which  contained  this 
valiant  simile. 

An  age  whose  finest  product  is  Addison,  and  whose 
prose  had  more  poetry  in  it  than  its  poetry,^  must  in 
the  lower  forms  of  its  phenomena  afford  much  ground 
for  the  moralist.  This  ground  the  Essayists  occupied 
to  good  effect.  And  as  in  dealing  with  objectionable 
qualities,  these  qualities  must  be  represented,  a  later 
reading  of  the  reforming  literature  is  liable  to  be  dis- 
tasteful to  those  who  live  in  an  age  in  which  the 
reforms   are   in  operation.     Miss    Austen's  outburst 

1  Even  as  late  as  Goldsmith,  the  poetry  had  not  been  divorced 
from  the  formalism.  The  '  Vicar  '  has  more  poetic  charm  (in  that 
it  has  more  simple  nature)  than  its  author's  most  celebrated  poem, 
which  still  represents  the  stiffness  of  the  age  by  such  lines  as  — 

But  now  the  sounds  of  population   h.\l ; 
No  cheerful  murmurs  fluctuate  in  the  gale. 


Her  Place  335 

against  the  Spectator  in  '  Northanger  Abbey '  has 
puzzled  some  who  too  exclusively  associate  the 
Essays  with  the  urbanity  of  Addison,  and  whose 
regard  for  the  delightful  Sir  Roger  causes  the  less 
admirable  portions  to  be  overlooked.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  Miss  Austen  is  defending  her  trade 
in  attacking  the  habit  of  novelists  of  "  degrading  .  .  . 
the  very  performances  to  the  number  of  which  they 
are  themselves  adding.  .  .  .  Alas !  if  the  heroine  of 
one  novel  be  not  patronized  by  the  heroine  of  another, 
from  whom  can  she  expect  protection  and  regard?" 
If  a  young  lady,  she  says,  is  detected  reading  a  novel, 
she  will  affect  indifference  and  momentary  shame, 
but  will  be  proud  if  caught  with  a  volume  of  the 
Spectator  in  her  hand,  "  though  the  chances  must  be 
against  her  being  occupied  with  any  part  of  that 
voluminous  publication  of  which  either  the  matter  or 
manner  would  not  disgust  a  young  person  of  taste ; 
the  substance  of  its  papers  so  often  consisting  in  the 
statement  of  improbable  circumstances,  unnatural 
characters,  and  topics  of  conversation  which  no  longer 
concern  any  one  living ;  and  their  language  too  fre- 
quently so  coarse  as  to  give  us  no  very  favorable 
idea  of  the  age  that  could  endure  it." 

This  is  interesting,  not  only  as  emphasizing  Miss 
Austen's  personal  taste,  but  also  as  pointing  to  the 
fact  that  the  age  "  that  could  endure  it  "  she  at  least 
thought  was  passed.  Her  strictures  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  a  new  age  had  come  in.  Though  a 
larger  view  might  have  been  taken  of  the  subject, 
Miss  Austen  was  right  in  her  charge  that  the  Essay- 
ists were  coarse.  It  is  almost  always  a  frivolous  and 
very  frequently  a  vulgar  company  we  have  to  travel 
with  through  their  pages,  and  the  interest  is  literary 


336  J^iic  Austen 

and  historical,  rather  than  living  and  spontaneous,  in 
all  those  dissections  of  beaux'  hearts  and  ritual  direc- 
tions for  the  proper  exercise  of  fans.  But  the  same 
criticism  might  be  applied  to  Juvenal,  and  Miss 
Austen  would  have  enjoyed  that  author  still  less. 
That  she  did  not  inveigh  against  coarseness  in  Rich- 
ardson, who  carried  on  the  didactic  purpose  of  the 
Essayists,  is  because  she  so  gladly  recognized  in  his 
great  synthetic  skill  the  same  power  that  moved  her 
to  construct,  that  had  Lamb's  summing  up  been 
known  to  her,  that  "  the  keynote  of  the  whole  com- 
position is  libertine  pursuit,"  "  the  undivided  pursuit 
of  lawless  gallantry,"  she  would  not  have  allowed  the 
truthfulness  of  the  complaint  to  have  interfered  with 
the  enjoyment  of  the  work.  '  Pamela,  or  Virtue 
Rewarded,'  —  the  sub-title  shows  the  moral  purpose. 
The  novelist's  aim  in  *  Clarissa '  is  elaborately  set 
forth  on  the  titlepage :  "  Clarissa :  Or,  The  History 
of  A  Young  Lady:  comprehending  The  Most  Im- 
portant Concerns  of  Private  Life:  And  Particularly 
Shewing  the  Distresses  That  May  Attend  The  Mis- 
conduct Both  of  Parents  and  Children,  In  Relation  to 
Marriage."  ^ 

The  eighteenth  century  was  an  outspeaking  age, 
and  in  the  department  of  manners  the  change  for  the 
better  was  so  gradual  that  it  was  not  until  its  very 
close  that  it  became  remarkable,  —  a  change  for 
which,  on  its  literary  side.  Miss  Austen  herself  was 
mainly  responsible.  But  the  point  is  that  a  moralist 
in  a  coarse  age,  reflecting  its  predominating  charac- 
teristics by  having  them  as  the  subjects  of  his  dis- 
cussion, must  either  weary  the  readers  of  future  ages 
through  constant  repetitions  of  unattractive  scenes 
1  See  also  the  Preface  and  Postscript. 


Her  Place  337 

(which  is  the  fault  of  Richardson,  and  is  what  Miss 
Austen  objects  to  in  the  Spectator),  or  must  make 
the  scenes  themselves  alluring,  which  was  accom- 
plished by  Fielding.  Although  I  fancy  that  gentle- 
man had  his  tongue  in  his  cheek  when  he  wrote  of 
'  Tom  Jones  '  that  it  contained  nothing  which  could 
*'  offend  even  the  chastest  eye,"  still,  by  the  grace  of 
satire,  and  by  his  enormous  comic  power  in  the  de- 
lineation of  human  weaknesses,  he  is,  with  all  his  ani- 
mal coarseness  weighing  against  the  estimate,  ranked 
properly  with  the  moralists.  The  age  did  not  con- 
sider him  coarse.  One  young  lady  can  write  to  an- 
other of '  Joseph  Andrews'  that  it  has  a  "surprising 
variety  of  nature,  wit,  morality,  and  good  sense," 
and  that  it  is  "  peculiarly  charming  "  because  of  its 
'•  spirit  of  benevolence."  ^ 


Miss  Burney  has  been  called  the  creator  of  the 
family  novel.  Using  that  faculty  of  observation  on 
which  all  true  realism  must  be  built,  and  which  is 
first  noticeable  in  the  pages  of  the  Spectator,  and  is 
later  developed  to  a  high  degree  by  Richardson  and 
Fielding,  she  presents  her  public  with  a  chastened 
set  of  characters,  whose  actions,  for  the  first  time  in 
a  chronological  course  through  English  fiction,  may 
be   read    aloud   without    expurgations    and   without 

^  '  A  Series  of  Letters  between  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Carter  and  Miss 
Catherine  Talbot,'  etc.,  London  :  Printed  for  F.  C.  and  J.  Rivington, 
1808,  vol  i.,  p.  16.  This  is  the  "  Mrs.  Carter  "  who  was  so  celebrated 
for  her  extraordinary  learning,  the  chief  result  of  which  was  her  trans- 
lation of  Epictetus, —  a  learning,  however,  which  did  not  exclude  an 
almost  equally  notable  piety. 

22 


338  Jaiie  Austen 

blushes.  'Evelina'  was  published  in  1778,  some 
sixty  years  from  the  date  of  the  Spectator,  and  thirty- 
six  from  '  Joseph  Andrews,'  and  the  question  arises, 
is  this  change  in  tone  due  to  a  feminine  delicacy,  or 
is  it  the  reflection  of  a  real  change  in  manners  and 
morals?  A  chivalrous  desire  to  associate  the  two 
ideas,  Woman  and  Purity,  in  letters,  is  unhappily 
defeated  by  recollections  of  Mrs.  Behn  and  Mrs. 
Haywood ;  and  a  glance  at  the  times  will  show  that 
the  habitual  grossness  of  the  century  had  not  mate- 
rially improved.  Miss  Burney's  comparative  mild- 
ness probably  owes  its  origin  to  a  refinement  which 
is  to  be  found  among  women  in  all  ages,  notwith- 
standing these  typical  exceptions. 

We  have  touched  on  the  coarse  looseness  of  the 
early  part  of  the  century  to  denote  the  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  any  subtler  art  in  its  closing  years;  for 
this  viciousness,  growing  by  what  it  fed  on,  increased 
in  the  dead  weight  of  its  materialism  until  its  utter 
lack  of  principle,  its  graceless  infamy,  its  brutal  hard- 
ness, its  almost  cannibal  grossness,  would  make  one 
cry  out  that  religion  was  dead  in  England  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  did  not  one  remember  that  re- 
ligion never  dies,  and  that  if  it  should  die,  it  would 
not  be  religion. 

In  1786  there  were  nearly  two  hundred  offences 
on  the  statute  book  punishable  by  death.  Even  to 
receive  a  stolen  pocket-handkerchief  might  be  made 
a  capital  offence.     Pope's  verse  — 

And  wretches  hang  that  jurymen  may  dine  — 

applied  to  the  latter  quarter  of  the  century  also ;  for 
although  suits  in  chancery  were  spun  out  over  many 


Her  Place  339 

years,  in  criminal  cases  —  as  if  human  life  were  less 
valuable  than  civil  property  —  the  trial  was  generally 
compressed  into  a  single  day.  Women  were  still 
whipped  publicly  through  the  streets.  In  1789  per- 
sons were  burned  at  the  stake  for  crimes  for  which  we 
now  give  ten  years*  imprisonment,  and  school  chil- 
dren were  allowed  holidays  to  see  executions.  For 
petty  debts  men  languished  in  prison  for  life.  The 
keystone  of  commercial  existence  was  the  African 
slave  trade.  As  late  as  1828,  Lord  Shaftesbury  saw 
the  insane  in  "  mad  houses  "  chained  to  straw  beds  and 
left  from  Saturday  to  Monday  without  the  care  of 
their  keepers.  It  was  not  until  1771  that  the  law  was 
repealed  which  condemned  a  prisoner  who  refused  to 
plead  on  a  capital  charge  to  death  by  weights  laid  on 
the  breast.^ 

An  age  so  publicly  careless  of  human  life,  so  mon- 
strously perverted  in  the  general  principles  of  law  and 
equity,  must  necessarily  be  an  age  of  private  social  cor- 
ruption and  ugly  indelicacy.  To  the  active  vice  of 
the  early  years  of  the  century  was  now  added  the  ac- 
cumulated grossness  of  the  Hanoverians,  mixed  with 
the  stupid  limitation  of  wisdom  to  all  things  material. 
The  novel  of  manners  naturally  reflected  these  char- 
acteristics, and  it  is  to  Miss  Burney's  credit  that  so 
much  of  them  is  handed  down  to  us  in  a  way  that 
sufficiently  denotes  the  age,  without  the  unbridled 
license  of  her  masculine  predecessors.  For  the  first 
time  we  see  the  possibilities  and  the  attempts  of  prof- 

^  See  Lecky's  '  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,' 
vol.  i.,  pp.  245  seq.,  and  vol.  vi.,  pp.  541  seq.,  and  the  authorities  there 
quoted ;  also  Mr.  Russell's  chapter  '  Social  Ameliorations,'  in  his 
'  Collections  and  Recollections ; '  and  biographies  of  Shaftesbury  and 
Howard. 


340  ]^^^  Austen 

ligacy  rather  than  the  high-noon  picture  of  vice 
actually  triumphant.  She,  too,  is  a  moralist  and  has 
a  distaste  for  the  immoralities  which  she  describes. 
But  she  shares  with  Richardson,  and  with  all  who  fall 
short  of  the  highest  art,  the  failure  to  make  that  art  so 
compellingly  great  that  it  will,  on  the  one  hand,  not 
be  pushed  aside  by  its  own  creations  (and  be  thus 
defeated  by  the  means  intended  for  its  victory)  and, 
on  the  other,  not  lend  its  own  proper  beauty  to  the  en- 
hancing of  what,  without  such  aid,  would  appear  to  all 
healthyeyes  as  improper  and  hideous.  We  are  not  now 
concerned  with  this  latter  fault,  as  it  marks  too  nearly 
that  decadence  of  art  which  has  always  set  in  after 
some  great  golden  age,  signifying  that  initial  stage  of 
a  decline,  after  a  long  life  upon  the  heights,  when 
art  begins  to  be  cultivated,  not  to  make  its  subject 
beautiful,  but  to  minister  selfishly  to  itself.  There 
were  no  heights  in  the  days  of  our  eighteenth-century 
realists;  and  the  best  of  them  were  beginning  a 
new  ascent,  with  many  missteps  and  huge  dif- 
ficulties to  overcome,  to  an  elevation  under  whose 
grateful  shade  we  still  take  refuge  in  the  poems  of 
Wordsworth. 

Such  was  the  age  still  extant  when  Jane  Austen 
wrote,  with  a  public  taste  to  coax  with  her  delicate 
flavors  which  had  been  fed  for  innumerable  years  on 
those  rude  meats  which  nourish  the  animal  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  spiritual  in  man,  as  well  as  that  later 
fondness  for  highly  spiced  condiments  first  prepared 
in  the  'Castle  of  Otranto.'  Until  we  reach  Miss 
Austen  we  do  not  meet  with  realism  wholly  devoid  of 
offence  (for  Miss  Burney's  mildness  is  only  compara- 
tive), and  she  is  the  first  novelist  who  combines  with 
this  a  living  interest,  which  makes  the  smallness  of  her 


Her  Place  341 

scale,   forced  on  her  by  her   omissions,    a   positive 
merit. 

On  the  point  of  taste  alone  — a  word  we  shall  have 
to  make  frequent  use  of  in  our  consideration  of  Miss 
Austen  —  the  superiority  of  '  Pride  and  Prejudice'  and 
'Emma'  to  'Evelina'  and  'Cecilia'  is  everywhere 
manifest.  The  atrocious  behavior  of  Captain  Mirvan 
towards  Madame  Duval  has  no  counterpart  in  the 
younger  lady's  fiction,  who  cannot  allow  Emma's  mo- 
mentary ill-humored  wit  at  the  expense  of  Miss  Bates 
to  go  unrebuked.  There  is  nothing  in  the  six  books 
of  Miss  Austen  like  the  adventure  of  Evelina  with  the 
creatures,  male  and  female,  of  the  Marylebone  Gar- 
dens, that  night  of  the  fireworks.  Only  a  trace  of  the 
swearing  habit  of  the  day  may  be  found  in  our  author. 
"  Good  God !  "  with  Miss  Burney  is  as  common  as 
the  "  Mon  Dieu !  "  of  a  Frenchman,  and  even  Lord 
Orville  cannot  announce  breakfast  without  calling  upon 
divinity  to  witness ;  while,  as  an  Irishman  might  put 
it,  every  time  Miss  Larolles  opens  her  mouth  a 
"  Lord !  "  pops  out.  Even  Miss  Edgeworth  makes 
her  women  profane,  or  at  least  one  of  them,  Mrs. 
Freke  ;  and  as  for  her  men,  the  language  of  Sir  Philip 
Baddely  might  be  used  as  a  swearing  dictionary.  In 
regard  to  drinking,  contrast  the  mild  solitary  instance 
of  Mr.  Elton  with  Miss  Edgeworth's  Lord  Delacour, 
who  could  "  drink  more  than  any  two-legged  animal 
in  his  majesty's  dominions."  It  would  have  been  im- 
possible for  Miss  Austen  to  have  described  such  a 
cruel  scene  as  the  two  young  rakes  in  'Evelina'  arrange 
for  their  jaded  amusement  in  compelling  two  old 
women,  over  eighty  years  of  age,  to  run  a  foot-race 
for  a  bet.  Mrs.  Goddard  occasionally  leaves  her  neat 
parlor  to  "  win  or  lose  a  few  sixpences  by  "  Mr.  Wood- 


342  Jane  Austen 

house's  "  fireside."  That  is  all,  —  a  mere  touch.  Per 
contra,  in  Miss  Edgeworth's  Mrs.  Luttridge,  we  see 
the  vice  emphasized.^ 

So  much  for  her  restraint  in  picturing  the  grosser 
forms  of  the  Hfe  of  the  times,  which  was  partially  due 
to  her  actual  unacquaintance  with  them,  and  a  con- 
scientious realism  which  deterred  her  from  portraying 
what  she  did  not  experimentally  know;  but  still  more, 
to  a  native  delicacy  which  shrank  from  all  coarseness 
and  vice.  Because  of  their  broader  brushes,  we  gain 
from  Miss  Burney  and  Miss  Edgeworth  a  wider  view 
of  the  day  than  from  Miss  Austen,  and  the  works  of 
the  latter  would  be  incomplete  without  hints  from  the 
former ;  and  yet,  such  is  the  nicety  and  the  truthful- 
ness of  her  art,  there  is  more  verity  in  her  limited 
portraiture  than  in  the  more  comprehensive  exhibits 
of  the  others. 

VI 

"  There  is  no  way,"  says  Herbert  Spencer,  *'  of 
distinguishing  those  feelings  which  are  natural  from 

'  How  prevalent  it  was  may  be  learned  from  Horace  Walpole's 
letters.  See  in  particular  his  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  in  1786, 
vol.  viii.,  p.  73  :  "  At  the  end  of  the  century  three  titled  ladies,  Lady 
Buckinghamshire,  Lady  Archer,  and  Lady  Mount-Edgcombe,  were  so 
notorious  for  their  passion  for  play  that  they  were  popularly  known 
as  •  Faro's  Daughters,'  and  Gilray  published  in  1796  a  caricature  rep- 
resenting two  of  them  as  standing  in  the  pillory,  with  a  crier  and  his 
bell  in  front.  This  was  in  consequence  of  what  was  said  by  Chief 
Justice  Kenyon,  in  a  case  that  came  before  him  in  1796,  when  he  said, 
with  reference  to  the  practice  of  gambling  :  '  If  any  prosecutions  of 
this  nature  are  fairly  brought  before  me  and  the  parties  are  justly 
convicted,  whatever  be  their  rank  or  station  in  the  country,  —  though 
they  should  be  the  first  ladies  in  the  land  —  they  shall  certainly  ex- 
hibit themselves  in  the  pillory.'"  —  'Novels  and  Novelists  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,' by  William  Forsythe.  New  York:  D.  Appleton 
&  Co.,  1871. 


Her  Place  343 

those  which  are  conventional,  except  by  an  appeal  to 
first  principles."  And  it  might  be  added  that  an  age 
which  loses  sight  of  first  principles  is  unprincipled^  as 
well  as  unnatural.  Hence  the  grossness  of  this  age 
we  are  considering,  which  makes  its  formalism  so 
peculiar.  There  are  by  Miss  Austen's  time  the  open- 
ing notes  of  new  voices,  aiming  at  these  first  principles. 
Cowper  and  Burns  have  come.  It  is  real  nature  that 
we  see  once  more  in  Cowper,  who  was  the  first  to 
criticise  Pope  (in  whom  was  gathered  up  the  quintes- 
^nce  of  the  formal)  on  the  ground  that  he  — 

Made  poetry  a  mere  mechanic  art, 

And  every  warbler  has  his  tune  by  heart. 

Guided  by  the  same  standard  of  judgment  as  Addi- 
son, Pope  thought  Dryden  the  greatest  because  the 
smoothest  of  poets.  Disguise  it  to  our  consciences 
by  whatever  literary  chicanery  we  may  invent,  the 
fact  is  that  Christianity  has  changed  the  standards  of 
art  by  its  infusion  of  ethics.  Much  of  the  talk  about 
the  separation  of  art  and  ethics  is  futile  because  the 
latter  has  so  quietly  and  so  insidiously  charged  the 
atmosphere  of  life  that  the  art  which  is  true  to  life 
cannot  but  partake  of  that  atmosphere.  An  ethical 
emphasis,  therefore,  should  not  be  regarded  as  a  dif- 
ferentiation from,  but  as  a  representation  of,  art,  other 
things  being  equal.  Christianity  has  established  a 
perfect  reciprocity  between  nature  and  grace,  between 
art  and  ethics.  What  is  simply  non-moral  in  Theoc- 
ritus, because  simply  natural,  is,  in  his  paraphraser 
Dryden,  immoral,  because  of  the  altered  atmosphere ; 
and  Pope's  ever-straining  aim  at  finish  made  him, 
although  a  realist,  unreal ;  and,  like  his  master,  the 
pseudo-classicism   of  his  work,  mixed  with  a  native 


344  J^^^  Austen 

pruriency  of  thought,  resulted  in  a  body  of  indelicate 
imagery  which  will  forever  exclude  it  from  the  best 
poetry  of  the  world. 

While  Cowper  breaks  away  from  this  formal  stand- 
ard, we  do  not  find  in  him,  or  in  the  poets  before 
him,  more  than  a  simple  feeling  for  nature.  The 
deepest  note  he  touches  is  the  noble  poem  on  his 
mother's  picture,  the  receipt  of  which  stirred  a  real 
affection  to  real  poetry,  which  still  moves  us  to  real 
sympathy.  "  The  meek  intelligence  of  those  dear 
eyes  "  looks  at  us  as  it  did  at  him ;  which  is,  I  think, 
the  best  proof  of  the  living  quality  of  the  emotion. 
To  appreciate  how  Cowper  had  advanced  on  the 
mechanical  conventionalisms  of  the  day,  compare 
this  poem  with  one  on  a  similar  subject  by  his 
friend  and  biographer,  Hayley.  Poor  Hayley's  filial 
love  was  probably  as  deep  as  Cowper's,  but  we  weep 
with  the  one  and  do  not  weep  with  the  other.  The 
adjective 's  the  thing.  The  ages  of  conventionalism 
are  weak  in  adjectives,  and  Hayley  can  think  of  no 
better  word  to  describe  the  ocean  rolling  under  a 
vessel  tossed  by  a  fearful  storm  than  "  indignant," 
And  yet  we  do  not  find  in  Cowper  the  passionate 
love  for,  the  high  communings  with.  Nature  which 
come  later.  We  have  in  Cowper  and  Crabbe,  in 
Thomson  and  Gray,  a  series  of  objective  moralizing 
pictures,  pleasingly  new  and  pure,  with  a  comment 
running  along  with  the  sentiment,  and  in  the  de- 
gree in  which  it  is  unduly  emphasized,  interfering 
with  the  completeness  of  the  charm,  Cowper's  ideal 
of  bliss  was  an  evening  at  Olney,  with  Mrs.  Unwin  and 
Lady  Austen  purring  about  the  tea-kettle. 

Fireside  enjoyments,  homeborn  happiness. 
And  all  the  coniforts  that  the  lowly  roof 


Her  Place  245 

Of  undisturbed  retirement,  and  the  hours 
Of  long  uninterrupted  evening  knows. 

This  is  also  the  Vicar's  thought :  "  What  thanks  do 
we  not  owe  to  heaven  for  thus  bestowing  tranquillity, 
health,  and  competence  !  I  think  myself  happier  now 
than  the  greatest  monarch  upon  earth.  He  has  no 
such  fireside,  nor  such  pleasant  faces  about  it." 
When  the  storm  arises  outside,  there  is  no  fierce 
Brontean  joy  in  its  demoniac  fury.  Mrs.  Unwin  pours 
another  cup  of  tea,  and  Lady  Austen  suggests  a  new 
canto  to  the  *  Task,'  in  which  the  wild  bluster  of  the 
outdoor  night  shall  be  contrasted  pleasantly  with  the 
cozy  indoor  comfort  of  blazing  logs  and  blissful  com- 
panionship. Nor  has  the  day  of  "  eager  thought " 
yet  come  in  its  fulness  — 

"  Leisure  is  gone  —  gone  where  the  spinning-wheels  are 
gone,  and  the  pack-horses,  and  the  slow  wagons,  and  the 
peddlers  who  brought  bargains  to  the  door  on  sunny  after- 
noons. Ingenious  philosophers  tell  you,  perhaps,  that  the 
great  work  of  the  steam  engine  is  to  create  leisure  for  man- 
kind. Do  not  believe  them ;  it  only  creates  a  vacuum  for 
eager  thought  to  rush  in.  .  .  .  Old  Leisure  .  .  .  was  a 
contemplative,  rather  stout  gentleman,  of  excellent  digestion, 
of  quiet  perceptions,  undiseased  by  hypothesis  :  happy  in 
his  inability  to  know  the  causes  of  things,  preferring  the  things 
themselves." 

or  Goldsmith  would  disturb  the  peaceful  reflections 
of  his  good  Vicar  with  a  few  troublesome  thoughts 
about  the  social  conditions  beyond  his  fireside.  The 
poor  were  being  observed,  but  objectively.  Their 
miseries  were  noted  by  Crabbe,  but  there  was  no  plan 
of  social  helpfulness  in  his  design,  and  no  philosoph- 


346  Jane  Austen 

ical  or  ethical  reach  in  his  poetry.^  No  better  idea 
of  the  complete  change  of  attitude  in  this  respect  can 
be  gained  than  by  contrasting  Crabbe's  "  hoary  swain  " 
with  Mr.  Markham's  '  Man  with  the  Hoe.'  The  pas- 
sion for  humanity  had  not  yet  developed ;  but  it  was 
something  to  have  the  facts  recognized  which  in  due 
time  awakened  the  enthusiasm.  So,  although  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Crabbe  did  not  care  so  very  much  for  the 
poor  of  the  two  livings  he  so  rarely  visited,  he  is  suf- 
ficiently sorry  for  their  wretchedness  to  observe  them 
from  a  distance,  and  to  make  reflections.  This  "  ex- 
ercise of  the  internal  sense  "  is  to  bear  fruit  in  time. 
Reflection  comes  after  observation,  and  observation 
had  only  lately  had  its  new  birth.  The  search  for 
causes,  the  effort  to  substitute  a  good  new  for  a  bad 
old,  the  probing  of  evil  prompted  by  a  loving  hope 
in  the  high  possibilities  of  all  mankind, — this  had 
not  yet  begun. 

The  democratic  song  of  Burns  had  little  or  no  im- 
mediate influence  on  the  society  which  we  are  consid- 
ering: it  was  only  the  milder  feeling  of  Cowper  and 
Crabbe,  of  Thomson  and  Gray,  of  Goldsmith  and 
Young,  which  reflected  the  premonitions  of  the  dawn 
which  came  with  Wordsworth.  It  was  still  the  orna- 
mental age,  still  an  age  lacking  the  highest  forms  of 
imagination,  still  content  with  fancy.  And  further, 
apart  from  its  choicest  springs,  it  was  still  the  down- 
right age,  and,  in  a  way,  a  hopeless  age,  for  Satire  is 
frequently  the  last  stage  of  hopelessness.  A  lack  of  im- 

1  It  is  only  just  to  note,  however,  that  the  essay  on  prisons  which 
Goldsmith  puts  in  the  mouth  of  his  unhappy  Vicar  is  in  full  accord 
with  the  enlightened  views  of  modern  reformers,  and  that  in  his 
prose  preface  to  '  The  Borough,'  Crabbe  condemns  what  has  since 
been  legislated  out  of  existence  in  our  best  alms-houses,  —  the 
promiscuous  herding  of  the  sexes  in  such  places. 


Her  Place  347 

agination  precluded  optimism,  and  without  optimism 
there  can  be  no  reform.  The  depths  of  coarseness 
which  are  sounded  in  Smollett's  works,  for  example,  — 
are  they  not  merely  echoing  notes  of  hoarse,  pitiless 
voices  around  him?  Is  he  not  simply  Crabbe  extended 
into  prose,  his  coarser  nature  less  gently  moved,  a 
Hogarth  in  fiction,  who,  feeling  the  meanness,  perpetu- 
ates it  for  a  warning ;  and,  stopping  at  realism,  not 
endowed  with  power  to  draw  the  opposing  virtues, 
presents  too  unrelieved  a  picture  of  the  vice?  Here  is 
the  moralist  again,  not  differing  in  character,  only 
differing  in  manner,  from  the  Essayists. 

vn 

We  can  best  approach  the  positive  study  of  Miss 
Austen  by  a  little  further  comparison  with  the  elder 
lady.  And  here  again,  let  me  say,  it  is  not  primarily 
because  the  two  are  of  one  sex  that  I  thus  group 
them,  but  because  Miss  Austen  is  pre-eminently  the 
novelist  of  manners,  and  the  manners  of  the  age  had, 
between  herself  and  Fielding,  been  most  typically 
described  by  Miss  Burney. 

First,  in  their  attitude  towards  the  "  lower  classes." 
Miss  Austen  has  been  called  narrow  because  she 
limited  her  view  to  her  own  class.  But  when  the 
sympathies  are  not  sufficiently  extended  to  gather 
into  their  scope  objects  which,  away  from  those  sym- 
pathies, have  no  interest,  and  are  perhaps  antagonistic, 
it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  and  good  taste  to  leave  them 
alone.  Jane  Austen's  omissions  were  not  due  to  a 
wilful  disobedience  to  some  heavenly  vision ;  they 
were  nothing  more  than  the  absence  of  fruit  because 
no  seed  had  been  sown.     It  was  simply  a  denial  of 


348  Jaiic  Austen 

nature ;  and  to  be  true  to  such  a  denial  is  as  fine  an 
art  as  is  the  opposite  art  which  compels  its  votaries 
to  be  true  to  it.  We  have  only  to  recall  Miss  Bur- 
ney's  Branghtons  and  her  Mr.  Smith  to  become 
grateful  to  Miss  Austen  for  her  "  narrowness,"  and  to 
appreciate  the  difiference  between  that  and  the  sort 
which  throws  contempt  upon  what  does  not  belong 
to  itself.  Better  even  contemptuous  silence  than 
contemptuous  speech.  With  all  her  superiority  to 
her  great  predecessors  in  the  matter  of  refinement, 
Miss  Burney  shares  in  the  weakness  of  her  age  — 
which  is  the  weakness  of  all  brutal  ages  —  in  holding 
up  for  purposes  of  ridicule  manners  and  customs 
below  the  level  of  her  own.  Her  plan  is  to  make 
them  contemptible,  which  is  the  very  word  her  good 
clergyman,  Mr.  Villars,  uses  concerning  them.  It 
was  the  age  of  the  whipping-post  and  the  stocks,  and 
this  is  their  reflection  in  literature.  There  are  three 
ways  of  treating  a  class  whose  habits  and  tastes  are 
different  from  those  of  the  readers  the  author  has 
in  mind:  not  to  treat  it  at  all,  which  was  Miss 
Austen's  method;  or  to  accentuate  the  vulgarities, 
and  thus  widen  the  difierence  between  it  and  other 
classes  by  the  addition  of  disgust  to  the  sum  of  the 
comic  effect,  and  this  was  Miss  Burney's  way ;  or  to 
let  sympathetic  take  the  place  of  supercilious  laugh- 
ter,—  to  laugh  with,  instead  of  at,  the  children  of 
one's  fancy,  and  thus  to  bear  a  more  human  relation 
to  them,  —  more  that  of  a  father,  less  that  of  a  step- 
father. "  Put  yourself  in  his  place "  is  a  form  of 
noblesse  oblige  which  had  not  yet  made  itself  manifest 
in  fiction,  —  the  sensibility  to  appreciate  the  values  of 
standpoints  other  than  one's  own,  and  from  those 
standpoints  to  humorously  criticise   one's  own.     It 


Her  Place  349 

was  reserved  for  Dickens  to  first  draw  the  life  of  the 
"lower  classes"  with  both  sympathy  and  humor; 
and  there  is  nothing  in  the  later  nineteenth-century 
attitude  of  art  towards  those  classes  which  would  not 
add  to  the  lessening  of  the  gap  of  a  proper  mutual 
understanding  between  master  and  servant,  the  em- 
ployer and  the  employed,  the  sons  of  leisure  and  the 
sons  of  toil.  But  if  Miss  Austen  does  not  reach  be- 
yond her  times  after  this  sympathy,  she  at  least  rises 
above  them  in  abstaining  from  a  ridicule  which,  con- 
sidering its  origin,  is  as  vulgar  as  the  vulgarity  it 
discloses. 

And  yet  how  keen  is  Miss  Austen's  contempt  when 
the  occasion  justifies  it !  Nowhere  else  is  her  swift 
wit  so  well  employed  as  when  piercing  some  affected 
extravagance,  or  some  indecorous  vulgarism.  In  all 
her  books  there  is  not  a  single  page  of  broad  comedy ; 
the  wit  is  as  subtle  as  frost-work,  the  humor  as  deli- 
cate as  dew.  She  is  always  the  gentlewoman,  appar- 
ently unconscious  of,  because  consciously  refusing 
to  see,  coarse  colors.  There  is  a  look  of  disdain,  a 
quick  lifting  of  the  eyebrows,  a  shooting  glance  from 
the  hazel  eyes,  and  it  is  done. 

She  is  the  very  impossibiUty  he  would  describe,  if  indeed 
he  has  now  delicacy  of  language  enough  to  embody  his  own 
ideas. 

He  was  a  stout  young  man  of  middling  height,  who,  with 
a  plain  face  and  ungraceful  form,  seemed  fearful  of  being 
too  handsome  unless  he  wore  the  dress  of  a  groom,  and 
too  much  like  a  gentleman  unless  he  were  easy  where  he 
ought  to  be  civil,  and  imprudent  where  he  might  be  allowed 
to  be  easy. 


35©  Jane  Austen 

Elinor  agreed  to  it  all,  for  she  did  not  think  he  deserved 
the  compliment  of  rational  opposition. 

This  capacity  for  restraint  places  her  strongest 
heroines  on  secure  levels  with  able  men  without  sub- 
tracting from  their  feminine  charm ;  for  restraint  in 
speech  is  supposed  to  be  an  intellectual  faculty  given 
in  its  superior  excellence  only  to  the  stronger  sex. 
Yet  Elinor  is  here  akin  to  the  gentleman  Mr.  Ham- 
erton  tells  us  of,  who  never  disputed  with  his  French 
mother-in-law  because  of  the  known  futility  of  the 
outcome:  when,  because  accustomed  to  use  *  Alger  ie* 
and  ^  Afrique'  as  convertible  terms,  she  would  main- 
tain, for  example,  that  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  be- 
longed to  France  because  Africa  belonged  to  France, 
he  would  cheerfully  reply,  "  Oui,  chhe  mhe.  Votes 
avez  raison." 

Indeed,  the  position  of  women  is  so  much  firmer 
with  Jane  Austen  than  with  Miss  Burney  that  we 
must  attribute  the  difference  to  a  finer  conception 
rather  than  to  any  change  in  manners  that  may  have 
crept  in  in  the  few  years  between  the  two.  The  full 
power  of  restraint  is  now  used  for  the  first  time  in 
fiction.  It  is  not  only  because  Miss  Austen's  scenes 
are  removed,  for  the  most  part,  from  the  contamina- 
tion of  the  "  great  world  "  that  her  heroines  are  not 
offered  the  surprising  facilities  of  falling  into  scrapes 
that  fascinated  the  attention  of  Miss  Burney,  She 
knew  that  world,  at  least  through  books,  and  we  can 
fancy  her  reading  the  current  fiction  with  an  easy 
smile  on  her  lips  as  she  detects  some  exaggerated 
"  sensibility,"  and  inwardly  compares  it  perhaps  with 
the  simple  proud  standard  of  her  own  "  sense."  The 
"  world  "  which  touched  Evelina  in  the  person  of  Sir 


Her  Place  351 

Clement  Willoughby  gets  toned  down  to  the  "  world  " 
which  touches  Fanny  Price  in  the  person  of  Henry 
Crawford.  In  passing  to  Miss  Austen  we  leave  the 
old  familiar  situation,  in  which,  to  the  "  inexpressible 
confusion  "  of  the  heroine,  the  hero  drops  "  on  one 
knee "  in  the  act  of  his  declaration ;  the  heroine 
meantime  "  scarcely  breathes,"  the  '*  blood  forsakes 
her  cheeks,"  "  her  feet  refuse  to  sustain  her."  Then 
the  hero  "  hastily  rises  "  (with  his  one  knee)  and 
"  supports  "  her  to  a  chair,  "  upon  which  she  sinks 
almost  lifeless."  It  was  her  ladylike  delicacy,  her 
feeling  for  proportion,  her  distaste  for  faults  against 
taste,  her  conceptions  all  constantly  checked  and 
challenged  by  a  never-failing  sense  of  humor  that 
discovered  the  false  "  sensibility,"  in  the  place  of 
which  she  set  up  the  true. 

Consider  the  occasion  of  this  outburst :  " '  Deny 
me  not,  most  charming  of  women,'  cried  he,  '  deny 
me  not  this  only  moment  that  is  lent  me,  to  pour 
forth  my  soul  into  your  gentle  ears,'  "  etc.,  etc.  Sir 
Clement  has  hurried  Evelina  into  a  carriage  away 
from  the  others  of  her  party  and  given  the  driver  a 
wrong  direction  in  order  to  press  his  suit  with  a  girl 
who  grows  more  and  more  frightened  as  she  realizes  the 
situation.  One  would  suppose  that  the  infinite  cunning 
and  pertinacious  plotting  to  accomplish  the  one  ob- 
ject which  apparently  ever  animated  the  breasts  of 
the  eighteenth-century  "  men  of  the  world  "  would,  in 
this  case,  have  been  wise  enough  to  avoid  the  absurd- 
ity of  expecting  success  over  timidity  by  employing 
means  of  a  particularly  terrifying  nature.  Mackenzie's 
*  Man  of  the  World,'  which  may  be  taken  as  a  sum- 
ming up  of  the  characteristics  of  the  eighteenth-cen- 
tury conception  of  its  Lovelaces  and  its  Sir  Clement 


352  Jane  Austen 

Willoughbys  (this  latter,  however,  being  but  a  pale 
feminine  reflection  of  the  article),  is  a  very  different 
person  from  what  we  mean  when  we  use  the  term  ;  and 
thanks,  first  of  all,  to  Miss  Austen  that  the  difference 
exists.  Think,  madam,  of  your  daughter  "  pursued" 
by  some  modern  Sir  Thomas,  who  thinks  that  he  can 
best  commend  his  gentility  to  her  gentleness,  and 
mollify  the  dislike  which  he  feels  she  has  for  him,  by 
such  moderate  and  pacifying  conduct  as  driving  her, 
against  her  will,  away  from  the  only  place  where  she 
will  be  safe,  and  seizing  that  of  all  moments  to  urge 
his  claims.  And  this  the  "  only  moment "  that  is  "  leiit '' 
him!  Unsuitability  of  situation  and  speech  is  gener- 
ally marked  by  the  unnaturalness  of  both.  So  we 
smile  contentedly  when  we  hear  Sir  Clement,  about 
this  time,  addressing  Evelina:  "My  dearest  life,  is  it 
possible  you  can  be  so  cruel?  Can  your  nature  and 
your  countenance  be  so  totally  opposite?  Can  the 
sweet  bloom  upon  those  charming  cheeks,  which  ap- 
pears as  much  the  result  of  good-humor  as  of  beauty," 
etc.,  etc. 

In  Miss  Burney's  novels,  gentlemen  address  young 
ladies  in  the  street  without  introductions,  and  without 
any  rebukes  from  accompanying  chaperons.  Every 
man  seems  to  have  been  at  liberty  to  insult  every 
woman,  and  before  we  arrive  at  the  last  of  our  dear 
Evelina's  adventures,  we  have  wondered  many  times 
where  were  the  police.  These  adventures,  it  is  true, 
cease  to  alarm  us  as  we  proceed,  for  we  come  to  a 
certain  comforting  knowledge,  based  on  exceptionless 
examples  of  past  experience,  that  at  the  supreme  mo- 
ment Lord  Orville  will  appear,  and  sighing  will  melt 
away  in  joy.  I  got  into  a  little  habit,  when  standing 
on  the  brink  of  one  of  these  climaxes,  of  betting  with 


Her  Place  353 

myself  that  the  next  words  would  be,  "  just  then  who 
should  come  in  sight  but  Lord  Orville  !  "  and  I  always 
won  the  bet. 

Yet  this  is  the  book  that  Burke  sat  up  all  night  to 
finish,  and  over  whose  Mr.  Smith,  Johnson  exclaimed, 
"  Harry  Fielding  never  drew  so  good  a  character  !  "  ^ 
It  was  great,  for  the  times ;  and,  as  we  have  said,  such 
an  improvement  morally  on  the  preceding  fiction  as 
to  fairly  win  for  its  author  the  domestic  title  she  en- 
joys. But  it  was  a  simple  age  in  its  standards,  or  the 
great  vogue  of  *  Evelina '  would  not  have  been  possible. 
It  went  through  four  editions  in  one  year;  ^  and  when 
Mr,  Austen  wrote  his  publisher  about '  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice,' he  referred  to  the  manuscript  as  likely  to  make 
a  book  of  the  same  size  as  this,  which  was  still,  now 
some  nineteen  years  since  its  first  appearance,  the  most 
talked-of  novel  in  print.  I  doubt  if  there  is  a  pub- 
lisher on  the  green  earth  to-day  who  would  receive  its 
like ;  whereas,  supposing  the  twentieth-century  coun- 
terpart of  '  Northanger  Abbey '  were,  to-morrow, 
presented  to  any  discriminating  house,  a  repetition  of 
the  Bath  episode  would  be  equally  impossible  to  real- 
ize in  one's  fancy.  This  is  because  Miss  Austen 
struck  the  modern  note,  as  well  as  that  of  her  own 
time.  She  was  natural ;  and  up  to  the  limit  she  pur- 
posely set  herself,  one  sees  in  her  work  a  true  reflec- 
tion of  that  time.  But  its  grosser  extravagances  are 
suggested  rather  than  dwelt  upon;  hints  take  the 
place  of  delineations  ;  the  particular  is  referred  to  the 
general,  and  the  universal  corrects  the  individual.     So 

1  'Diary  and  Letters  of  Madame  D'Arblay,  edited  by  her  Niece.' 
London.  Published  for  Henry  Colburn  by  his  Successors,  Hurst  & 
Blatchett.     1854.     vol.  i.,  p.  63. 

2  See  original  preface  to  '  Cecilia.* 

23 


354  J^^e  Austen 

an  old-time  heroine  may  for  the  first  time  appear  be- 
fore the  critical  eyes  of  a  new-time  girl  without  awak- 
ening risibilities ;  and  whatever  oddities  of  her  century 
may  cling  to  her  have  the  effect  of  emphasizing  the 
quaintness,  without  in  the  least  widening  the  lines  of 
divergence  between  the  periods.  ^ 

So  only  the  gravest  literary  persons  read  Richard- 
son and  Miss  Burney  and  Miss  Edgeworth  to-day.  Is 
there  a  single  man  of  letters  of  your  acquaintance 
under  sixty  years  of  age  who  can  lay  his  hand  upon 
his  heart  and  swear  that  he  has  read  all  of  Richard- 
son?^ Is  there  one  among  them  who  has  read  the 
four  novels  of  Miss  Burney?  Is  not  this  the  first  in- 
timation to  some  that  there  are  four?     '  Evelina,'  yes ; 

1  This  kinship  to  the  modern  idea  is  very  evident  in  all  her  letters. 
One  of  the  specimens  given  by  Mr.  Austen-Leigh  to  indicate  "  the  live- 
liness of  mind  which  imparted  an  agreeable  flavor  both  to  her  corres- 
pondence and  her  conversation  "  is  the  following  trifle  which  she  hit 
off  upon  hearing  of  the  marriage  of  a  certain  middle-aged  flirt  with  a 
Mr.  Wake  : 

*'  Maria,  good-humored  and  handsome  and  tall, 

For  a  husband  was  at  her  last  stake  ; 

And  having  in  vain  danced  at  many  a  ball, 

Is  now  happy  to  jump  at  a  Wake."  —  Memoirs,  p.  a6o. 

This  sounds  as  if  it  had  been  written  for  last  week's  comic  paper ;  and 
her  more  serious  essays  in  prose  suggest,  one  hundred  years  before 
her  time,  the  light  and  graceful  style  of  Miss  Repplier. 

2  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  could  be  done  to-day  without  stimu- 
lants. Nothing  but  a  sense  of  the  importance  of  an  acquaintance  with 
the  "  father  of  the  English  novel  "  [he  should  more  properly  be  called 
the  father  of  the  English  realistic  novel,  as  the  more  general  title  is, 
by  rights,  Defoe's]  saves  the  student,  to  whom  very  likely,  it  is  an  in- 
tolerable bore  on  account  of  the  reiteration  ad  ittfinitum  ;  which  is  not 
variations  on  one  theme,  but  a  constant  pounding  of  one  note  through 
endless  volumes.  Think  of  the  size  of  it:  there  are  about  one  million 
words  in  '  Clarissa,'  which  makes  the  work  more  than  five  times 
bigger  than  the  longest  of  Miss  Austen's,  which  is  about  the  size  of 
the  average  novel  of  the  day. 


Her  Place  355 

'Cecilia,' perhaps;  but,  honestly  now,  *  Camilla'?  and 
*  The  Wanderer'  ?  On  the  other  hand,  who  that  has 
ever  read  and  appreciated  one  of  Jane  Austen's  nov- 
els has  not  immediately  read  all  the  others?  Nay, 
are  they  not  among  the  immortal  few  that  we  read 
again  and  again? 

VIII 

It  must  be  acknowledged,  however,  that  they  are 
not  read  by  very  many,  and  that  they  have  never  been 
"popular."  They  have  not  the  human  clutch  of  Miss 
Bronte's  work  upon  the  heart,  and  do  not  sound  the 
depths  of  the  spirit  like  George  Eliot's.  It  is  far 
more  difficult  to  find  reasons  for  the  dislikes  of  non- 
literary  readers  than  it  is  to  find  reasons  for  the  likes 
of  their  opposites ;  but  we  shall  probably  not  be  far 
wrong  if  we  attribute  the  popular  neglect  of  Jane 
Austen  chiefly  to  the  absence  of  passion  in  her  books. 
Her  avoidance  of  the  high  lights  of  others  resulted  in 
too  tame  a  color  scheme  to  please  the  majority,  who, 
in  the  long  run,  do  not  care  for  the  mere  novel  of 
character,  unless  passionately  conceived.  She  is  too 
quiet  for  those  whose  definition  for  all  peaceful  things 
is  "  stupid,"  and  who  fail  to  distinguish  the  varying 
degrees  of  quietness.  And  it  should  be  noted  that 
she  never  was  a  "  popular  "  novelist ;  which  suggests 
that  the  "people"  have  about  the  same  standard  of 
likes  and  dislikes  in  each  generation,  although  they 
may  be  at  any  time  moved  by  some  strange  power 
controlling  them  against  their  will.  Miss  Austen's 
genius  was  not  of  that  compelling  kind.  But  it  had 
the  lasting  qualities  which  proved  it  to  be  genius,  and 
which,   sooner    or    later,   provokes    discovery,    and 


356  Jane  Austen 

gathers  to  itself  a  constantly  increasing  discern- 
ment. Herein  lies  the  essential  difference  between 
Miss  Austen  and  Miss  Burney,  that,  whereas  the 
latter  was  immensely  popular,  she  is  not  read  to-day 
—  in  other  words,  she  has  fallen  from  her  popularity  — 
Miss  Austen,  no  more  popular  then  than  now,  has 
never  suffered  such  an  eclipse ;  but  among  the  dis- 
cerning, from  then  till  now,  her  fame  has  been  con- 
stantly increasing.  And  it  is  a  legitimate  hope  that 
this  number  will  so  continue  to  increase  as  to  finally 
merge  the  "discerning"  into  the  "popular." 

"  Popular  "  pedestals  are  naturally  insecure :  Miss 
Austen's  fame  is  safe,  partly  because  it  never  rested 
upon  one. 

IX 

It  is  astonishing  how  slowly  this  appreciation  grew, 
and  how  little  the  rare  quality  of  the  work  was  recog- 
nized during  her  lifetime.  I  do  not  know  of  any 
equal  neglect  elsewhere ;  her  case  is  singularly  apart 
from  others. 

Jane  Austen's  life  has  always  been  regarded  as 
peculiarly  free  from  the  besetting  cares  of  the 
author;  and  if  a  life  without  a  history  is  a  happy 
one,  hers  was  indeed  the  happiest  of  all.  It  is  a 
pleasant  story  of  domestic  peace  that  her  chief  bi- 
ographer tells,^    and  there  is  scarcely  a  murmur  to 

1  'The  novels  of  Jane  Austen.  Lady  Susan,  the  Watsons.  With 
a  Memoir  by  her  Nephew,  J.  E.  Austen-Leigh.'  Boston :  Little,  Brown, 
&  Co.,  1899.  This  is  the  second  edition,  a  valuable  addition  to  which 
is  the  cancelled  chapter  of  'Persuasion.'  The  first  edition  (London, 
Bentley,  1870)  contains  less  matter,  and  does  not  include  the  stories. 
The  Memoir  is  a  thin  volume,  dignified,  tender,  and  in  excellent  taste ; 
and,  with  Lord  Brabourne's  book,  forms  the  source  of  the  inspiration 


Her  Place  357 

break  the  secluded  quiet  from  beginning  to  end.  It 
was  apparently  a  family  that  lived  entirely  to  itself,  — 
related,  indeed,  to  great  personages,  as  any  one  may 
discover  who  chooses  to  puzzle  through  Lord  Bra- 
bourne's  genealogies,  but  with  an  acquaintance  limited 
to  the  society  of  its  own  rural  neighborhood.  With 
the  exception  of  the  father's  death,  there  was  no 
break  in  the  contented  circle  until  Jane  herself  was 
called  away;  and  the  gentle  shadow  of  Cassandra's 
lost  love,  and  the  financial  troubles  of  Henry,  near 
the  close  of  Jane's  career,  were  the  only  clouds  upon 
the  almost  unbroken  prosperity  of  that  long  summer 
day  of  her  life.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  desire 
on  the  part  of  her  father  to  enlarge  his  acquaintance ; 
and  his  sons,  like  himself,  cultured  but  retiring  men, 
remained  content  in  their  narrow  stations ;  this  habit 
of  privacy  pertaining  even  to  that  brother  who  rose 
to  the  highest  rank  in  the  British  navy ;  for,  though 
dying  full  of  honors,  we  have  to  search  the  official 
records  for  our  knowledge  of  his  distinguished  ser- 
vices. I  cannot  agree  with  Mr.  Adams  that  the 
lack  of  recognition  which  we  have  noticed  is  devoid 
of  pathos,  on  the  ground  that  she  received  as  much 
as  the  taste  of  the  age  would  allow,  or  induce  her  to  ex- 
pect. ^  I  think  there  is  an  exceeding  pathos  in  those 
years  of  waiting,  she  knowing  instinctively,  all  the  time, 
her  strength ;  and  her  father's  responsibility  for  the 
gaps  between  writing  and  publishing  has  not  been  suffi- 

of  the  subsequent  biographies,  some  of  which  are  not  much  more 
than  synopses  of  the  novels ;  the  one  critical  exception  being  Prof. 
Goldwin  Smith's  monograph  ('  Life  of  Jane  Austen,'  by  Goldwin 
Smith.  London,  Walter  Scott,  1890).  [All  references  to  Mr.  Austen- 
Leigh's  book  in  this  Study  relate  to  this  edition.] 

1  '  The  Story  of  Jane  Austen's  Life,'  by  Oscar  Fay  Adams.     Chi- 
cago: A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co.,  April,  1891,  pp.  13,  14. 


358  Jane  Austen 

ciently  pointed  out.  Instead  of  sending  the  manuscript 
of 'Pride  and  Prejudice '  to  Cadell,  he  writes  about  it. 
As  the  author  was  entirely  unknown,  the  publisher, 
wearily  recalling,  no  doubt,  the  many  manuscripts  he 
had  received  from  young  lady  aspirants  in  country 
towns,  entertaining  visions  of  repeating  Miss  Burney's 
success,  naturally  puts  the  proposition  to  death  by 
return  of  post;  and  'Pride  and  Prejudice'  is  not 
published  until  sixteen  years  later.  The  Reverend 
George  Austen  is  not  the  first  "  handsome  proctor  " 
who,  settled  in  some  sleepy  parish,  lets  his  wits  grow 
fat  at  the  expense  of  his  family's  credit;  and  his 
greatest  punishment  is  that  he  did  not  live  to  know 
that  his  daughter  was  a  recognized  author,  for  not 
one  of  her  books  came  out  in  his  lifetime.  If  we  are 
visited  in  the  land  of  shadows  with  an  accusing  knowl- 
edge of  our  omissions  on  earth,  perhaps  it  was  his  lot 
to  mingle  his  grief  with  her  regret  that  he  was  not 
with  her  to  enjoy  the  fruition  of  a  work  which,  by  a 
more  strenuous  effort  on  his  part,  might  have  been 
accomplished  before  the  separation. 

There  seems,  indeed,  to  have  been  a  lethargy  about 
that  country  parsonage  life,  a  conservatism  grown 
into  an  almost  fatalistic  habit.  "  Lethargy  "  is  about 
the  last  word  one  would  apply  to  Jane  Austen's  quick 
perceptions  and  ready  wit;  but  the  effort  to  publish 
was  constantly  arrested  by  a  kind  of  sleeping-sickness, 
—  periods  of  inactivity  hindering  the  fulfilment  of 
terms  of  industry.  There  were,  as  we  have  said,  six- 
teen years  between  the  writing  and  the  publishing 
of  '  Pride  and  Prejudice.'  '  Sense  and  Sensibility ' 
was  not  printed  until  fourteen  years  after  it  was 
begun.  *  Northanger  Abbey '  was  written  five  years 
before  it  was  prepared  for  the  press,  and  then  reposed, 


Her  Place  359 

forgotten  and  unclaimed  for  several  years  longer 
in  the  safe  of  a  Bath  publisher.  She  began  two 
stories  which  she  never  finished,  and  she  finished  one 
which  she  never  published.  Two  of  her  novels,  one 
of  which  was  the  earliest  sold,  she  did  not  live  to  see 
in  print.  These  facts  are  not  set  forth  complainingly, 
—  for  as  we  possess  the  happy  outcome,  it  is  a  matter 
of  no  moment,  now,  —  but  by  way  of  illustrating  the 
advantage  on  the  side  of  those  whose  inward  call  is 
hurried  by  the  outward  circumstance.  There  was 
too  much  affluence  with  Jane ;  there  was  no  com- 
pulsion to  write ;  it  was  an  amusement,  chiefly ;  she 
was  too  easily  queen  in  her  small  circle.  And  yet 
the  family  did  not  exalt  her,  for,  with  all  their  cheer- 
ful pride  in  her  accomplishments,  they  shared  the 
unapprehension  of  the  age  as  to  the  greatness  of  her 
distinction. 


X 

She  lived  in  stirring  times,  but  there  is  no  trace 
whatever  of  them  in  her  letters  ^  or  her  books.     She 

1  Mr.  Austen-Leigh's  biography  was  supplemented  in  1884  by 
'  Letters  of  Jane  Austen.  Edited  with  an  Introduction  and  Critical 
Remarks  by  Edward,  Lord  Brabourne.'  Two  vols.,  London,  Richard 
Bentley  and  Son.  The  great-nephew  here  supplements  the  work  of 
the  nephew  with  a  large  collection  of  Jane's  letters,  almost  all  of 
which  are  addressed  to  her  sister  Cassandra.  They  are  just  such 
letters  as  one  acquainted  with  the  novels  would  expect ;  bright,  hu- 
morous, full  of  the  gossip  of  the  neighborhood,  never  intended  for 
other  eyes  than  the  sister's,  and  without  any  public  interest.  It  is  a 
grave  question  whether  such  letters  should  be  published ;  and  there 
can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  if  Jane  could  have  fancied  the  possi- 
bility of  such  an  event,  she  would  have  very  indignantly  forbidden  it. 
Lord  Brabourne  would  have  served  his  purpose  by  printing,  say  two 
dozen  of  the  best  of  these  letters  ;  the  rest  is  repetition. 

They  are,  at  all  events,  honest,  and  delightfully  correspond,  in  tone 


360  Jane  Austen 

was  satisfied  with  the  parish.  Not  that  she  was 
narrow  in  her  judgments,  and  fancied  the  parish  at 
a  metropolitan  eminence :  it  was  an  elegant  indiffer- 

and  spirit,  with  the  fiction.  Compare,  for  example,  her  defence  of 
novel  reading  in  '  Northanger  Abbey'  with  "  I  have  received  a  very 
civil  note  from  Mrs.  Martin  requesting  my  name  as  a  subscriber  to 
her  library.  .  .  .  As  an  inducement  to  subscribe,  Mrs.  Martin  tells 
me  that  her  collection  is  not  to  consist  only  of  novels,  but  of  every 
kind  of  literature,  etc.  She  might  have  spared  this  pretension  to 
our  family,  who  are  great  novel  readers,  and  not  ashamed  of  being 
so ;  but  it  was  necessary,  I  suppose,  to  the  self-consequence  of  half 
her  subscribers"  [vol  i.,  p.  178].  And  we  see  the  humorous  impa- 
tience which,  for  the  public,  took  form  in  Miss  Bates,  here  reflected  in 
private :  "  The  Webbs  are  really  gone  !  When  I  saw  the  wagons  at 
the  door  and  thought  of  all  the  trouble  they  must  have  in  moving, 
I  began  to  reproach  myself  for  not  having  liked  them  better,  but  since 
the  wagons  have  disappeared,  my  conscience  has  been  closed  again, 
and  I  am  excessively  glad  they  are  gone"  [vol.  ii.,  p.  319]. 

We  get  in  these  letters,  in  short,  just  what  a  careful  reader  of  her 
books  would  expect.  The  delightful  impromptu  balls  of  the  novels 
are  the  counterparts  of  those  Steventon  affairs  so  vivaciously  de- 
scribed to  her  sister  ;  and  we  prefer  to  associate  that  innocent,  roguish 
face  which  Lord  Brabourne  has  selected  for  his  frontispiece,  rather 
than  that  better  known  picture  with  the  hideous  cap,  assumed  too 
early  by  '  Aunt '  Jane,  with  the  gaieties  in  which  she  took  such  a 
prominent  part,  —  going  through  twenty  dances  on  one  occasion, 
without  fatigue;  and  they  were  not  our  easy  waltzes,  either. 

But  there  is  too  much  of  it,  and  there  is  not  the  excuse  for  a  long- 
winded  effort  which  prevails  when  the  letters  present  interesting 
views  on  varied  topics  and  exchanges  of  opinion  with  distinguished 
correspondents.  A  thinker's  opinions  are  always  interesting  —  to 
thinkers.  But  there  was  a  total  unacquaintance  with  the  many  cele- 
brated men  of  the  day,  intercourse  with  whom  would  have  spurred  her 
intellect  into  a  keener  atmosphere  than  that  surrounding  this  exchange 
of  family  confidences.  Jane  was  capable  of  criticising  Kean's  Shy- 
lock,  but  all  she  says  to  Cassandra  is  that  she  is  "quite  satisfied" 
with  it  [vol.  ii.,  p.  218].  Doubtless  she  would  have  had  suggestive 
things  to  say  about  Byron  had  she,  like  Miss  Edgeworth,  had  Walter 
Scott  for  a  correspondent,  instead  of  the  sister,  to  whom  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  write  :  "  I  have  read  the  '  Corsair,'  mended  my  petticoat,  and 
have  nothing  else  to  do  "  [vol.  ii.,  p.  222].  Nor  do  we  get  any 
account  of  those  engaging  details  concerning  the  publishing  of  an 
author's  famous  books  which  adds  to  the  interest  of  so  many  biog- 


Her  Place  361 

ence  to  things  outside,  not  a  rustic  conceit,  that 
magnified  her  people  and  place ;  and  the  place  was 
magnified  only  because  it  happened  to  be  the  home 
of  the  people.  Referring  to  some  calamity,  she  ex- 
claims :  "  How  horrible  it  is  to  have  so  many  people 
killed  !  And  what  a  blessing  that  one  cares  for  none 
of  them  !"^  Yet  here  it  is  George  Eliot  and  not  Jane 
Austen  who  is  the  more  unusual,  for  most  of  us  bear 
the  losses  of  others  with  equanimity. 

This  close  partnership  pertained  even  to  literary 
matters,  in  which,  one  would  suppose,  the  self-knowl- 
edge of  her  superiority  would  have  caused  a  little 
more  seclusion  from  her  home  circle  and  a  little  more 
widening  out  to  her  brothers  and  sisters  of  the  pen. 
But  no.  She  writes  to  an  aspiring  niece,  about  the 
success  of  whose  manuscript  she  probably  entertained 
critical  doubts  :  "  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  like  no 
novels  but  Miss  Edgeworth's,  yours,  and  my  own ;  "  ^ 
and  she  generously  contrasts  the  "  strong,  manly,  vigor- 
ous sketches,  full  of  variety  and  glow"  which  a  nephew 
has  submitted  to  her  friendly  criticism,  with  her  own 
miniature  effects.^  If  she  did  not  consider  her  writ- 
ing as  her  contribution  to  a  family  symposium,  there 
was  at  least  a  playful  and  modest  assumption  to  that 
effect.  It  is  an  indication  of  the  peculiar  privacy  of 
this  pleasant  family  that  the  only  literary  confidences 

raphies :  one  would  like  to  know,  for  example,  how  Murray  came  to 
succeed  Egerton  as  her  publisher. 

And  so  we  say  that  to  give  us  two  octavo  volumes  is  a  little  too 
much.  Two  dozen  letters  would  have  been  as  good  as  two  hundred. 
We  do  not  in  the  least  share  the  great-nephew's  lament  that  the 
letters  of  his  other  great-aunt  have  been  destroyed.  Like  Mr.  Wood- 
house,  we  like  our  gruel  thin. 

^  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  109.  *  lb.,  vol.  ii,,  p.  318. 

8  Austen-Leigh,  p.  310. 


362  Jane  Austen 

of  Miss  Austen  were  with  those  children  of  her 
brothers  who  themselves  had  yearnings  in  the  direc- 
tion of  letters;  and  it  is  further  significant  of  her 
unassuming  helpfulness  and  gentle  affection  that  she 
conveys  her  criticisms  in  terms  of  such  equal  partner- 
ship. Those  were  fortunate  nieces  and  nephews  who 
had  a  Jane  Austen  for  an  "  Aunt  Jane,"  too  much  of 
whose  time  they  unwittingly  occupied  with  manuscripts 
of  fiction  which  she  must  have  suspected  would 
never  see  the  light  of  day,  but  which  she  never- 
theless discussed  with  them  with  such  ungrudging 
fulness.^ 

Her  letters  show  her  a  thorough  woman  of  the 
world,  little  though  her  world  was,  with  such  a  real 
delight  in  its  obvious  pleasures  as  to  shut  out  the 
considerations  of  the  larger  world  outside.  And  yet 
her  view  is  everywhere  private  and  domestic,  for  the 
"  worldly  "  attitude  obtains  in  the  quietest  surround- 
ings, and  one  may  be  a  **  man  "  or  "  woman  of  the 
world,"  and  still  care,  chiefly  for  one's  own  fireside. 
In  her  last  immortal  work,  it  is  the  dreadful  solitude 
of  Charlotte  Bronte's  heroine  which  gives  the  tragic 
touch  to  her  portrayal.  There  were  no  sisterly  con- 
fidences there,  for  the  sisters  who  had  been  were  not. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  has  only  to  think  of  Elizabeth 
and  Jane  Bennet,  Elinor  and  Marianne  Dashwood, 
Henrietta  and  Louisa  Musgrove,  Fanny  and  Susan 
Price,  Julia  and  Maria  Bertram,  Emma  and  Mrs.  John 
Knightley,  to  see  how  the  sweetest  relationship  of  their 
creator's  life  was  reflected  in  the  best  of  these  groups, 
and  how  the  worst  got  hints  for  its  depiction  from  the 

'  One  wishes  that  the  phonograph  had  been  in  use  then  and  em- 
ployed to  take  down  those  impromptu  fairy  stories  she  continued  for 
days  to  the  delight  of  her  brother's  children. 


Her  Place  363 

contrasting  shadows.  It  would  seem  that  nothing 
beyond  this  domestic  life  moved  her.  The  French 
cousin  who  was  an  inmate  of  the  parsonage  during 
Jane's  formative  period,  and  whose  father  had  perished 
in  the  Revolution,  was  more  useful  in  helping  her 
get  up  private  theatricals  than  in  supplying  the 
material  for  thoughts  that  were  beginning  to  shake 
the  world.  Of  Southey's  '  Life  of  Nelson,*  she  says : 
"  I  am  tired  of  Lives  of  Nelson,  being  that  I  never 
read  any ;  "  ^  and  she  makes  it  apparent  that  her  only 
interest  in  public  affairs  is  because  of  her  sailor 
brothers'  connection  therewith.  "  This  peace  will  be 
turning  all  our  rich  naval  officers  ashore,"  says  Sir 
Walter  Elliot's  lawyer  to  him  one  morning.  "  They 
will  all  be  wanting  a  home."  That  is  how  the  abdi- 
cation of  Napoleon  is  reflected  in  Miss  Austen's 
novels.  No  wonder  that  Mme.  de  Stael  thought 
'  Pride  and  Prejudice'  "  vulgaire" ^  —  a  term  that  has 
been  misunderstood  by  some  of  Miss  Austen's  com- 
mentators. She  is  the  very  opposite  of  everything 
vulgar,  as  we  commonly  apply  the  word.  The 
Frenchwoman,  responsive  to  the  ideas  awakened 
by  the  Revolution  —  ideas  furiously  active  in  her  own 
*  Corinne,'  —  could  not  understand  the  unconcern  of 
this  evidently  brilliant  contemporary,  whose  thoughts 
were  occupied  with  balls  and  tea-drinkings  and  the 
mild  flirtations  of  curates  while  Europe  was  seething 
with  the  activities  of  an  awakened  hope.  This  pas- 
sionless impersonality  was  what  aggravated  Charlotte 
Bronte  in  Miss  Austen,  whose  "  mild  eyes  "  reflected 

1  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  175. 

2  '  Madame  de  Stael,  Her  Friends  and  her  Influence  in  Politics 
and  Literature/  by  Lady  Blennerhassett,  3  vols.  London:  Chapman 
and  Hall,  1889,  vol.  iii.,  p.  455. 


364  Jarie  Austen 

none  of  the  troubles  which  in  one  way  or  another 
move  most  of  the  great  writers  to  literary  expression. 
Mme.  de  Stael,  therefore,  reading  Miss  Austen  in  the 
light  of  her  own  flame,  thought  '  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice '  "  trivial"  which  is  all  she  could  have  meant  by 
"  vidgaire." 

Our  author  was  a  Gallio  caring  for  none  of  these 
things.  It  might  be  said  that  she  did  care  for  them, 
but  was  clever  enough  to  avoid  the  incongruity  of  in- 
troducing them  into  her  peculiarly  domestic  scheme ; 
and  it  is  true  that  she  had,  in  a  more  singular  degree 
than  most,  that  nice  discrimination  which  would 
justify  such  a  defence,  were  it  not  remembered  that 
when  the  heart  is  full  of  a  subject,  that  is  the  sub- 
ject chosen  for  discussion.  Had  she  been  moved 
by  the  urgency  of  the  times,  as  was  the  author  of 
'  Corinne,'  as  was  later  the  author  of  '  Middle- 
march,'  we  should  have  had  a  different  outcome. 
To  be  sure,  it  was  only  a  faint  echo  of  that  conflict 
which  reached  the  country  parishes  of  England,  still 
remote  by  reason  of  bad  roads  in  an  age  before 
steam  had  annihilated  distance.^  Notwithstanding 
the  change  slowly  coming  over  the  face  of  English 
life  and  letters,  it  was  still  the  dull  era;  the  deep 
motives  at  work  under  the  transition  not  yet  show- 
ing effect  on  the  surface.  And  while  every  great 
artist    is    in  some  way  superior  to   his    times,  Miss 

1  It  was  not  yet  a  time  of  general  travel.  We  learn  from  Miss 
Burney  that  to  reach  Kensington  in  those  days,  one  had  to  take  a 
coach  from  London ;  and  from  Miss  Edgeworth  that  there  was  a  turn- 
pike between  Grosvenor  Square  and  Knightsbridge.  Much  of  the 
unrest  of  modern  fiction  is  nursed  by  globe-trotting.  Dorothea's 
awakening  from  restful  supposition  to  restless  realities  came  in  Rome. 
Miss  Austen's  career  was  bounded  by  one  or  two  countries  of  an 
England  not  yet  disturbed  by  too  easy  facilities  for  escape. 


Her  Place  365 

Austen's  superiority  was  not  in  that  sympathetic 
strength  which,  seizing  on  a  new  generous  idea,  is 
able  to  build  on  it  a  beautiful  structure  of  hope 
and  love.  She  was  a  realist,  with  an  imagination 
held  in  check  by  the  little  ironies  of  time  and 
place;  a  domestic  realist,  therefore  confined  in  her 
view;  domestic  in  the  purest  sense,  and  admirable 
in  consequence;  but  still,  because  a  realist,  reflect- 
ing as  much  of  the  coarseness  of  the  time  as  her 
elegant  discrimination  would  allow.  There  must  be 
something  either  of  philosophy,  or  romanticism,  or 
aestheticism,  or  pure  personal  suffering  in  an  au- 
thor's work  to  make  it  appeal  to  the  majority; 
there  was  none  of  these  things  in  Jane  Austen's, 
unless  it  was  the  philosophy  which  recommended 
silence  where  there  was  not  sympathy,  which  is 
sometimes  the  wisest  philosophy  of  all. 

It  is  amusing  to  read  of  Mme.  de  Stael's  desire  to 
meet  the  author  of  '  Pride  and  Prejudice '  rebuked 
by  the  declaration  that  she  did  not  wish  to  be  met 
as  an  author,  but  as  a  lady ;  and  the  Frenchwoman 
might  have  replied,  as  Voltaire  did  on  a  similar  oc- 
casion, that  she  did  not  have  to  travel  out  of  France 
to  meet  ladies.  The  episode  is  characteristic  of  the 
Austen  privacy,  and  it  has  an  interest  in  that  it  was 
almost  the  only  actual  opportunity  Jane  ever  had  of 
meeting  a  distinguished  stranger,  although  the  oppor- 
tunity might  frequently  have  been  found  but  for  this 
seclusion,  which  was  not,  on  the  one  hand,  a  proud 
aloofness,  nor  on  the  other,  due  to  shyness  and 
bashful  modesty,  but  was  simply  a  satisfaction  with 
existing  conditions,  they  being  very  pleasant.  She 
certainly  did  not  rise  superior  to  her  times  in  her 
attitude  towards  Mme.  de  Stael,  for  her  answer  indi- 


366  Jane  Austen 

cates  a  fear  of  being  mistaken  for  a  female  pedant ; 
the  idea  of  the  sexlessness  of  genius  not  yet  having 
arisen. 


XI 

This  lack  of  public  spirit  was  not  wholly  due  to  the 
times,  nor  to  the  position  of  women  then :  witness  the 
keen  interest  of  Mrs.  Barbauld  concerning  the  Test 
Act,  and  her  poem  to  Wilberforce.  It  was  due  rather 
to  an  isolation  more  mental  than  physical,  which  she 
did  not  strive  to  break.  Recall  the  men  who  made  Bath 
brilliant  in  the  first  years  of  the  past  century.  These 
were  they  who  probably  met  Miss  Austen  every  fine 
morning  on  their  strolls  to  and  from  the  Pump  Room, 
without  ever  knowing  that  the  sprightly  young 
woman  to  whom  perhaps  they  gave  a  glance  of  care- 
less admiration  as  they  passed,  was  the  author  of  a  story 
having  as  its  centre  of  interest  that  same  Bath,  and  des- 
tined to  help  materially  in  the  evolution  of  fiction  from 
romantic  impossibilities  to  conceivable  realities, —  a 
story  lying  forgotten  at  that  moment  in  a  publisher's 
office  in  that  very  city.  And  as  she  passed  them,  know- 
ing who  they  were  and  what  they  had  done,  and  know- 
ing that  she  had  already  written  three  novels  which 
ranked  her  as  worthy  of  their  most  respectful  salu- 
tations, but  which,  as  she  had  made  none  but  the 
most  futile  efforts  to  publish  them,  were,  so  far  as  that 
distinguished  company  was  concerned,  no  better  than 
unwritten,  —  as  this  momentarily  challenged  her  at- 
tention, I  think  she  must  have  suffered  some  compunc- 
tions. For  I  believe  that  she  knew  that  her  work  was 
great.  The  playful  references  which  she  makes,  in  the 
letters  to  her  sister,  to  her  favorite  creations,  as  if  they 


Her  Place  367 

were  real  personages,  proves  a  live  interest;  and 
her  resentment  of  the  manner  of  the  acknowledgment 
of  '  Emma '  on  the  part  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  after,  at 
his  own  suggestion,  that  work  had  been  dedicated  to 
him,  showed  that  she  was  alive  to  slights.  The  First 
Gentleman  thanked  her  for  the  handsome  copy  she 
had  sent  him ;  whereupon  Miss  Austen  says :  "  What- 
ever he  may  think  of  my  share  of  the  work,  yours 
seems  to  have  been  quite  right."  ^  She  knew  that  her 
work  was  great,  and  she  felt  that  she  had  a  distinct 
call  to  write  —  of  that,  too,  I  am  convinced.  Indeed, 
one  of  the  indications  of  her  genius  is  that  she  re- 
sponded to  this  call,  notwithstanding  the  surroundings 
which  opposed  it.  The  pressure  from  without  was  in 
the  contrary  direction :  the  only  excitation  was  from 
within,  and  it  was  great  enough  to  overcome  the 
opposition. 

Yet  she  deliberately  chose  anonymity,  and  she  was 
barely  discovered  before  she  died.  This  was  not 
because  of  any  isolation  which  convention  then 
required  of  her  sex.  Mrs.  Barbauld  numbered  among 
her  friends  Johnson,  Fox,  Priestley,  and  Howard. 
Lamb  talked  about  her,  and  Rogers  came  to  her 
three-o'clock  dinners.  She  had  the  advantage  of 
having  Dr.  Aikin  for  her  brother.  Miss  Edgeworth 
was  fortunate,  too,  in  the  possession  of  a  father  with  a 
distinguished  acquaintance.  She  was  very  intimate 
with  the  Barbaulds ;  the  famous  Dr.  Beddoes  was  her 
brother-in-law ;  the  elder  Darwin,  and  Day,  of  '  Sand- 
ford  and  Merton  '  fame  were  her  father's  friends  ;  and 
there  is  a  striking  chapter  in  her  'Memoirs'  of  her  visit 
to  Mme.  de  Genlis.  "  They  seem,"  says  Mrs.  Ritchie,  in 
her  '  Book  of  Sibyls,'  "  to  have  come  in  for  everything 
1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  279.     In  a  letter  to  her  publisher. 


368  Jane  Austen 

that  was  brilliant,  fashionable,  and  entertaining.  They 
breakfast  with  poets,  they  sup  with  marquises,  they 
call  upon  duchesses  and  scientific  men."  Both  Byron 
and  Moore  thought  her  charming,  and  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  composed  verses  in  her  honor. 

As  Mrs.  Barbauld's  brother  and  Miss  Edgeworth's 
father  assisted  their  relatives  to  widening  literary  ex- 
periences, so  did  the  husband  of  Mrs.  Opie  help  her; 
for,  although  he  had  lost  his  fashionable  following  by 
the  time  of  his  marriage,  he  had  retained  such  pow- 
erful friends  as  Erskine  and  Sheridan.  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,  Godwin,  Mrs.  Inchbald,  Sydney  Smith, 
Home  Tooke,  knew  this  amiable  lady,  who  also  en- 
joyed the  Athenian  privilege  of  residence  in  Norwich. 
Before  her  retirement  from  the  world,  Hannah  More 
was  the  idol  of  the  most  brilliant  society  of  the  day; 
and  after  that,  Horace  Walpole  used  to  visit  his  "  holy 
Hannah "  at  Cowslip  Green.  We  know  how  Dr. 
Johnson  made  a  celebrity  of  Fanny  Burney.  Mrs. 
Grant  of  Laggan  writes  to  Mrs.  Hemans,  "  praised  by 
all  that  read  you,  and  known  in  some  degree  wherever 
our  language  is  spoken."  Even  Miss  Mitford  had  a 
wide  acquaintance.  Talfourd  introduced  her  to  Mac- 
ready.  Charlotte  Cushman  played  her  Claudia,  and 
Young  and  Charles  Kemble  were  the  actors  of  her 
hero  parts.  Scott  and  Mackenzie  wrote  prologues 
and  epilogues  for  Joanna  Baillie.  Byron  dedicated 
verses  to  Lady  Blessington,  and  Lawrence  painted 
her  portrait. 

But  there  are  compensations  in  most  situations. 
Miss  Austen  was  at  least  unharassed  by  her  father, 
whereas  the  best  and  most  enduring  portions  of  Miss 
Edgeworth's  works  are  those  in  which  her  father  did 
not  interpolate,  nearly  all  the   didacticism  by  which 


Her  Place  369 

she  is  chiefly  but  not  justly  remembered  being  due  to 
his  interfering  zeal.  Mr.  Austen  was  a  just  man  of 
unspotted  reputation,  whereas  Miss  Mitford's  works 
were,  in  large  part,  the  outcome  of  a  bitter  urgency 
to  pay  the  debts  of  a  reckless  parent,  the  anxious 
hurry  manifesting  itself  in  the  strained  result.  The 
unfortunate  adoption  of  Johnson's  style  by  Miss  Bur- 
ney  was  doubtless  due  to  his  literary  sponsorship,  and 
makes  her  later  works  unreadable.  1  [And  a  father's 
unwise  zeal  also  hurried  '  Cecilia '  forward  to  its 
detriment.^]  Mrs.  Barbauld's  brother  apparently  did 
not  prevent  his  sister  from  falling  into  the  same  imi- 
tation in  at  least  one  of  her  essays,  whereas  Miss 
Austen's  brothers  exercised  no  disturbing  influence 
upon  her  style,  although  it  is  evident  that  at  least 
two  of  them  enjoyed  a  quiet  sympathy  with  her  tal- 
ent, which  occasionally  took  the  form  of  active,  but  not 
overbearing  helpfulness.  The  elder  brother,  James, 
the  father  of  her  biographer,  was  a  Varsity  man,  in- 
terested in  literature,  and  showed  an  unobtrusive  and 
sobering  influence  upon  the  formation  of  her  taste. 
The  other  brother,  Henry,  the  least  worthy  in  char- 
acter, seems  to  have  been  her  chief  literary  adviser; 
and  he  it  was  who  finally  circumvented  the  Bath  pub- 
lisher, which,  in  our  judgment,  covers  a  multitude  of 
faults;  although  to  buy  back  a  manuscript  for  the 
same  amount  for  which  it  had  been  sold  some  years 
previously  has  been  characterized  by  some  unduly 


1  Goldsmith's  remark  to  Johnson,  "  Dr.  Johnson,  if  you  were  to 
make  little  fishes  talk,  they  would  talk  like  whales,"  is,  when  applied 
to  his  copiers,  still  more  ludicrous,  for  the  doctor's  would  at  least 
not  be  imitation  whales. 

2  Preface  to  '  Cecilia,'  by  Annie  Raine  Ellis.  London :  Geo.  Bell 
&  Sons,  1S90,  p.  xviii. 

24 


37©  Jane  Austen 

anxious  persons  as  sharp  dealing,  in  that  the  ignorant 
man  was  kept  in  the  dark  as  to  the  identity  of  the 
author,  who  had  become  famous  since  his  purchase  of 
the  novel,  of  the  surpassing  merits  of  which  he  was  so 
evidently  uninformed.  The  transaction  seems  to  me 
not  only  justifiable,  but  poetically  just :  some  publish- 
ers get  their  punishment  in  this  world. 

Indeed,  it  may  readily  be  maintained  that  the  nar- 
row but  cultured  environment  of  Miss  Austen  gained 
for  her  more  than  the  fuller  and  socially  wider  lives 
of  her  contemporaries.  It  was  a  very  harmonious 
family,  bound  together  by  cheerful  affections,  and 
with  sufficient  variations  as  to  individualities  to  pre- 
vent monotony.  Each  member  doubtless  contrib- 
uted, quite  unconsciously,  his  share  of  influence;  we 
fancy  that  we  can  see,  for  example,  how  the  lively 
dispositions  of  Edward  and  Henry  helped  to  replen- 
ish the  vials  which  fed  her  sense  of  humor,  —  and 
this  kind  of  influence  is  manifestly  better  than  the 
actually  co-operative  sort  when  that  is  exercised  to 
the  harm  of  natural  expression. 


XII 

Whether  for  good  or  ill,  her  seclusion  had  the  cer- 
tain effect  of  keeping  her  unknown  and  unappreciated 
for  a  long  period.  The  Quarterly  article  of  October, 
1815,  was  the  first  authoritative  recognition,  and  this 
but  two  years  before  her  death  !  ^    That  was  not  only 

^  A  similar  interest  to  that  surrounding  the  '  Jane  Eyre  '  criticism 
invests  this  article.  Mr.  Austen-Leigh  refers  to  it  as  from  an  un- 
known pen,  and  criticises  it  for  a  lack  of  acumen.  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith 
also  condemns  it.  Neither  knew  that  it  was  Walter  Scott's  work,  as 
we  learn  that  it  was  from  Lockhart.     ['  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Sir 


Her  Place  371 

the  first,  it  was  the  only  notable  criticism  of  her 
books  which  she  ever  saw ;  and  she  died  supposing 
that  the  small  portion  of  the  world  which  knew  her 
at  all  held  her  inferior  to  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Miss 
Burney.  It  was  five  years  afterwards  that  Dr. 
VVhately's  article  was  published.^  Then  a  nine 
years'  silence,  until  a  reviewer  in  the  Edinburgh 
wrote :  "  Miss  Austen  has  never  been  so  popular  as 
she  deserved  to  be."  ^  And  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  the  writer  finds  his  reason  for  Miss  Austen's 
unpopularity  in  her  naturalness.  As  late  as  1859  a 
writer  in  Blackwood' s  begins  an  essay  on  our   au- 


Walter  Scott,  Bart./  by  J.  G.  Lockhart.  Edinburgh:  Adam  and 
Charles  Black,  1878,  p.  472,  note.]  And  this  unwitting  criticism  of 
Scott  for  a  lack  of  sympathy  is  amusingly  odd,  seeing  that  it  was 
Scott  who,  more  than  any  other,  gave  the  most  generous  sympathy 
to  other  writers,  and  was  the  first  to  speak  of  the  "  exquisite  touch  " 
of  Miss  Austen,  as  compared  with  his  "  bow-wow  "  strain.  [Ibid., 
p.  614.]  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  Whately's  contribution  of 
five  years  later,  reference  is  made  to  this  earlier  criticism,  thus,  "  We 
remarked  in  a  former  number,"  which  might  lead  one  to  suppose 
either  that  Whately  himself  was  its  author,  or  that  the  Quarterly 
editor  assumed  the  right,  by  manipulating  the  phraseology  of  his 
writers,  to  bring  all  contributions  on  a  given  subject  into  uniformity. 
As  we  know  from  Lockhart  that  the  former  hypothesis  is  not  true, 
the  conclusion  may  be  that  the  latter  is  an  explanation  of  the  arbi- 
trary power  which  gave  such  a  brutal  strength  to  the  papers  of  the 
Quarterly,  especially  as  Lockhart  himself  hints  that  the  style  of  the 
article  "  might  have  been  considerably  doctored  by  Mr.  Gifford."  Of 
course,  the  writer  may  have  himself  thus  indicated  his  agreement 
with  Sir  Walter's  opinion,  the  anonymous  character  of  the  Quarterly 
articles  allowing  such  freedoms.  In  any  case,  but  for  Lockhart,  the 
reference  would  only  deepen  the  difficulty  of  authorship.  And  it 
adds  to  the  entertainment  of  the  situation  that  the  very  citation  from 
Lockhart  which  Mr.  Austen-Leigh  makes  (p.  289,  footnote)  to  prove 
that  Scott  did  not  write  the  January,  1821,  article  is  our  authority  for 
the  assertion  that  he  did  write  the  October,  18 1 5,  review  I 

1  Quarterly,  vol.  xxiv.,  pp.  352  seq. 

2  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  li.,  pp.  448-457. 


372  Jane  Austen 

thor  by  saying :  "  For  nearly  half  a  century  England 
has  possessed  an  artist  of  the  highest  rank,  whose 
works  have  been  extensively  circulated,  whose  merits 
have  been  keenly  relished,  and  whose  name  is  still 
unfamiliar  in  men's  mouths."  ^ 

If  Miss  Austen's  admirers  have  been  few  in  com- 
parison with  other  novelists',  they  form  at  least  a  nota- 
ble set;  and  if  the  acknowledgment  has  been  tardy,  it 
has  been  select.  What  a  pity  that  she  did  not  know 
Scott's  full  opinion !  She  did  not  know  what  Scott 
really  thought ;  she  had  no  information  as  to  Lord 
Holland's  appreciation ;  ^  she  died  too  soon  for  Ma- 
caulay's  praise  to  reach  her,^  She  was  not  aware 
that  Southey  and  Coleridge  "  had  an  equally  high 
opinion  of  her  merits."  *  No  one  was  ever  known  to 
ask  for  her  autograph.  She  never  sat  to  Lawrence. 
No  cheap  edition  of  her  novels  was  published  until 
fifty  years  after  her  death,  when  the  '  Memoirs '  awak- 

1  Among  the  magazine  articles  on  Jane  Austen,  let  me  commend 
in  particular  that  of  the  North  British  Review,  vol.  Hi.,  p.  1 29.  An 
instructive  paper  by  Mr.  Adams,  in  the  New  England  Magazine, 
vol.  viii.,  pp.  594  seq.,  contains  illustrations  of  Steventon,  Bath,  Lyme- 
Regis,  Chawton,  and  Winchester.  Another  illustrated  article,  with 
an  older  set  of  pictures,  may  be  found  in  Harper's  for  July,  1870. 

2  '  Recollections  of  Past  Life,'  by  Sir  Henry  Holland,  Bart.,  M.  D. 
F.  R.  S.,  etc.    New  York :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1872,  p.  231. 

»  "  But  amidst  the  infinite  variety  of  lighter  literature,  with  which 
he  beguiled  his  leisure,  'Pride  and  Prejudice'  and  the  five  sister 
novels,  remained  without  a  rival  in  his  affections.  He  never  for  a 
moment  wavered  in  his  allegiance  to  Miss  Austen.  In  1858  he  notes 
in  his  journal,  •  If  I  could  get  materials,  I  really  would  write  a  short 
life  of  that  wonderful  woman,  and  raise  a  little  money  to  put  up  a 
monument  to  her  in  Winchester  Cathedral.'  "  ['  Life  and  Letters  of 
Lord  Macaulay,'  by  his  nephew,  G.  Otto  Trevelyan.  2  vols.  New 
York :  Harper  &  Bros.,  1876,  vol.  ii.,  p.  394.  See  also  the  Edin- 
burgh Review,  vol.  Ixxxvii.,  p.  561.] 

*  •  Memoir  and  Letters  of  Sara  Coleridge,'  edited  by  her  daughter. 
2  vols.    London  :  Henry  S.  King  &  Co.,  1873,  vol.  ii.  p.  75- 


Her  Place  373 

ened  a  tardy  interest.  Yet  of  her  Sara  Coleridge 
wrote,  "  the  most  faultless  of  female  novelists,"  ^  and 
the  great  Jowett  asks :  "  Have  you  thoroughly  made 
yourself  up  in  Miss  Austen,  the  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield,' 
and  Boswell?  No  person  is  educated  who  does  not 
know  them."  ^  Newman  read  her  books  through 
yearly  to  improve  his  style,  and  Tennyson  spoke  of 
her  as  next  to  Shakspere.^  She  is  the  critic's  novel- 
ist, as  Spenser  is  the  poet's  poet.  In  a  letter  to  Mur- 
ray, Gifford  praises  '  Pride  and  Prejudice  '  as  "  a  very 
pretty  thing.  No  dark  passages;  no  secret  cham- 
bers ;  no  wind  howlings  in  long  galleries ;  no  drops 
of  blood  upon  a  rusty  dagger,  —  things  that  should 
now  be  left  to  ladies'  maids  and  sentimental  washer- 
women." *  This  appreciation  ought  not  to  be  sur- 
prising. What  the  Quarterly  dissectors  could  not 
understand  was  spiritual  newness  and  the  tempestu- 
ous qualities  of  genius.  The  opposite  of  what  it 
condemned  in  Charlotte  Bronte  was  to  be  discovered 
in  Miss  Austen.  The  evenness  of  manner,  the  light- 
ness of  touch,  the  unruffled  temper,  the  freedom  from 
exaggeration,  the  uniform  fineness,  the  writing,  all 

1  '  Memoir  and  Letters  of  Sara  Coleridge.' 

2  '  Life  and  Letters  of  Benjamin  Jowett,  M.  A.,'  by  Evelyn  Abbott 
and  Lewis  Campbell.  2  vols.  New  York  :  E.  P.  Button  &  Co.,  1897, 
vol.  ii.  p.  338. 

*  '  Autobiography  of  Henry  Taylor.'  2  vols.  New  York :  Harper 
&  Bros.,  1885,  vol.  ii.,  p.  160.  In  this  conversation,  the  laureate 
thanks  God  that  no  letters  of  Jane's  had  been  preserved.  Lord  Bra- 
bourne's  little  indiscretions  must  have  added  gloom  to  his  closing 
years. 

*  '  A  Publisher  and  his  Friends.  Memoirs  and  Correspondence 
of  the  late  John  Murray,'  by  Samuel  Smiles.  2  vols.  London  :  John 
Murray.  New  York :  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1891,  vol.  i.,  p.  282. 
And  at  that  moment  '  Northanger  Abbey,'  ridiculing  these  very 
things,  was  lying  forgotten  and  unclaimed  in  a  publisher's  drawer  in 
Sathl 


374  J^^^  Austen 

unconscious,  as  if  a  French  Academy  was  watching 
her,  —  this  would  delight  a  critic  like  Gifford,  whose 
devotion  to  the  classical  ideal  was,  negatively,  not 
upset  by  any  revolutionary  thoughts  in  the  perusal 
of  Miss  Austen's  fiction,  and  was,  positively,  stimu- 
lated by  such  perfection  of  form,  disclosing  the  com- 
pletest  natural  method.  The  newness  of  Jane  Austen, 
highly  important  as  it  was,  was  not  a  supernatural 
newness ;  it  was  a  return  to  nature  quite  within  the 
approving  understanding  of  a  Quarterly  reviewer. 
For  this  reason.  Miss  Austen  has  a  following  of  pecu- 
liar strength,  although  it  be  small  in  numbers ;  and  the 
ability  to  appreciate  her  has  come  to  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  marks  of  a  delicate  culture.  "  First  and 
foremost,"  says  George  Eliot,  "  let  Jane  Austen  be 
named  as  the  greatest  artist  that  has  ever  written, 
using  the  term  to  signify  the  most  perfect  mastery 
over  the  means  to  her  end.  ...  To  read  one  of  her 
books  is  like  an  actual  experience  of  life.  .  .  .  Only 
cultivated  minds  fairly  appreciate  the  exquisite  art  of 
Jane  Austen." 

We  find  her  commended  where  we  should  ordinarily 
turn  last  of  all  for  judgments  on  novels.  In  a  letter 
quoted  by  Mr.  Austen-Leigh,  Miss  Quincy  refers 
thus  to  Chief  Justice  Marshall  and  Justice  Story: 
"  To  them  we  owe  our  introduction  to  her  society."  ^ 
Even  Mr.  Saintsbury,  who  is  generally  rude  to  the 
ladies,  says,  "  We  shall  have  another  Homer  before 
we  see  another  Jane." 

And  yet  it  is  of  the  essence  of  irony  that  almost  the 

only  appreciation  she  ever  received  while  in  the  flesh 

was  from  the  very  last  source  whence  it  would  be 

looked  for.     In  the  unpublished  diary  of  Lord  Rob- 

1  Austen-Leigh,  pp.  297-298. 


Her  Place  375 

ert  Seymour,  the  most  decorous  exploit  of  the  First 
Gentleman  in  England,  —  an  exploit  which,  as  com- 
pared with  others  chronicled,  might  be  held  up  as  a 
model  of  polite  behavior  —  is  thus  set  forth :  "  At  an 
assembly  he  beckoned  to  the  poor  old  Duchess  of 
Bedford  across  a  large  room,  and  when  she  had  taken 
the  trouble  of  crossing  the  room,  he  very  abruptly 
told  her  that  he  had  nothing  to  say  to  her."  This 
was  the  royal  blackguard  whose  "  permission "  to 
dedicate  '  Emma  '  to  himself  was  necessarily  regarded 
in  the  light  of  a  command  by  the  unfortunate  author- 
ess, who,  however,  got  her  quantum  of  amusement 
out  of  it  in  her  negotiations  with  the  entertaining  Mr. 
Clarke.  This  surprising  discrimination  on  the  part  of 
the  prince  has  been  imputed  to  him  for  righteous- 
ness. I  am  not  so  sure.  Only  last  week  I  heard  a 
young  woman  confess,  in  one  breath,  her  equal  fond- 
ness for  George  Eliot  and  Marie  Corelli. 

XIII 

It  might  not  be  uninteresting  to  conclude  this  sec- 
tion of  our  subject  with  a  cursory  survey  of  the 
lighter  manners  and  customs  which  this  distinguished 
lady  will  always  make  to  live  again  for  us  as  long  as 
her  novels  are  read  by  a  delighted  public. 

It  was  a  day  when  a  gentleman  might  use  a  knife 
to  convey  food  to  his  mouth,  because  it  was  the  day 
before  silver  forks.  Potatoes  were  eaten  only  with 
the  roast.  A  hostess  did  not  then  invite  her  dinner 
guests  with  the  fell  purpose  of  paralyzing  them  with 
envy  at  the  variety  of  her  china,  which  is  now,  we 
are  told,  the  sole  reason  for  the  swift  succession  of 
courses;  there  was  rather  the  housewifely  pride  ia 


3/6  Jane  Austen 

the  superiority  of  her  game  pies  and  home-brewed 
mead.  It  was  a  day  when  people  dined  at  four 
or  five  o'clock,  and  friends,  coming  thereto  in  a 
chaise  and  four,  perhaps  with  postilions,  stayed 
to  tea  afterwards,  concluding  with  a  supper  at 
eleven.  The  elegance  of  the  table  was  heightened 
by  a  hundred  burning  candles,  and  no  meats  were 
served  a  la  Russe,  —  no,  indeed,  the  host  had  to  do 
some  heavy  carving.  On  less  elaborate  occasions 
they  feasted  on  "  cold  souse,"  and  they  always 
died  of  "putrid  sore  throat"  instead  of  "malignant 
diphtheria." 

In  the  country  districts,  such  as  Jane  Austen  lived 
in,  instead  of  attending  meetings  of  women's  clubs, 
ladies  employed  their  spare  time  in  spinning  the 
thread  for  the  household  linen,  for  the  spinning- 
jennies  had  not  yet  entirely  taken  the  place  of  the 
Jennies  spinning.  It  was  a  day  when  young  ladies 
made  use  of  their  beaux  in  parliament  to  obtain 
franks  for  their  correspondence ;  ^  when  they  paid 
visits  of  ceremony  with  their  hands  encased  in 
muffs  of  gigantic  size,  and  wearing  puce-colored 
sarsenets;  when  they  might  appear  in  the  street 
wearing  simultaneously  an  India  muslin  dress  and 
a  fur  boa ;  and  when  they  paid  morning  calls  in 
peaked  caps  and  pelisses.  But  it  was  a  day  late 
enough  for  a  Jane  Fairfax  to  have  a  grand  piano 
instead  of  a  spinet. 

A  woman  was  then  a  "female"  —  to  whom  laven- 
der drops  were  applied  when  she  fainted,  which  she 
was  doing  pretty  constantly — not  Jane's  females, 
however.  Roads  were  not  then  "  muddy,"  but  "  dirty," 
and  pattens  had  not  gone  out.     A  carriage  drive  was 

1  Braboume,  vol.  ii.,  p.  172. 


Her  Place  3/^7 

called  what  it  really  was,  a  "  sweep."  Palmer's  coaches 
were  adding  a  new  pleasure  to  life  ;  and  the  tribe  of 
stay-makers,  according  to  a  pamphleteer  of  1798,^ 
were  "  likely  to  be  thrown  into  extreme  distress  be- 
cause the  female  sex  have  thought  proper  to  throw  off 
their  bodices,"  Linen  was  taking  the  place  of  silk, 
and  the  unpoetical  shoe-string  was  the  successor  to 
the  silver  buckle. 

In  the  higher  classes,  horse-racing  was  ousting  the 
cock-fight  from  its  pre-eminence  as  the  leading  diver- 
sion for  idle  moments.  Mrs.  Selwyn  will  not  venture 
in  a  "  phaeton  "  with  a  young  buck  as  long  as  her  will 
is  unsigned,  its  height  being  apparently  regarded  as 
the  dangerous  objection  :  the  carriages  which  ladies 
used  were  called  "  chariots."  It  was  the  day  when  the 
measured  minuet  was  passing,  probably  because 
swords  were  ceasing  to  be  worn,  and  to  dance  the 
minuet  without  getting  the  sword  between  the  legs 
was  the  chief  mark  of  distinction.  The  waltz  had  not 
been  introduced,  and  as  the  partners  were  separated 
in  the  country  dance,  it  must  have  been  a  good  deal 
of  a  bore  to  the  spirited  belles  of  Miss  Austen's  time. 
The  umbrella  with  which  Dr.  Grant  rescues  Fanny 
Price  from  the  rain  may  have  been  his  own,  but  a  few 
years  earlier  he  could  not  have  appeared  on  a  London 
street  with  it  without  having  been  mobbed,  as  the 
frank  British  public  was  wont  to  manifest  its  disap- 
proval of  the  masculine  use  of  a  feminine  article  in 
this  manner. 

It  was  a  day  when  gentlemen  wore  high-crowned 
hats  with  curved  brims,  the  cocked  hat  having  been 
dropped  in  '93 ;    when  they  had  their  hair  cut,  like 

1  '  Essay  on  the  Political  Circumstance  of  Ireland  under  Lord 
Camden,'  p.  89. 


378  Jane  Austen 

Frank  Churchill,  and  ceased  to  powder  it,  —  a  change 
of  fashion  brought  about,  as  Mr.  Lecky  supposes,  by 
Pitt's  tax  on  hair  powder  of  a  guinea  a  head ;  and  a 
day  when,  if  they  followed  Fox,  they  wore  a  buff,  and 
if  they  swore  by  Pitt,  a  scarlet  waistcoat,  and  when 
ladies  dressed  their  hair  with  foxes'  tails  to  denote 
their  devotion  to  the  Whig  cause.^  It  was  a  day 
when  Goldsmith's  *  History '  was  considered  an  au- 
thority and  when  it  was  elegant  for  a  young  lady  to 
know  a  little  Italian,  but  before  German  was  much 
thought  of,  although  Lady  Susan  writes  to  Mrs.  John- 
son of  the  "prevailing  fashion  of  acquiring  a  perfect 
knowledge  of  all  languages,  arts,  and  sciences,"  —  men- 
tioning German  as  one  of  the  accomplishments  which 
it  is  "  throwing  time  away  to  be  mistress  of."  It  was 
still  the  day  of  stiff,  angular  chairs ;  but  it  is  not  safe 
to  assert,  either  that  ease  of  manners  has  come  in 
with  ease  of  furniture,  or  that  the  age  of  increasing 
luxuries  is  necessarily  that  of  decreasing  courtesy; 
for  the  literature  of  the  times  we  are  discussing 
abundantly  shows  that  some  young  men  were  as  rude 
then  as  their  counterparts  are  now.  The  sofa  was  a 
sufficiently  new  and  expensive  comfort,  in  those  days, 
to  warrant  a  poem  in  its  honor;  and  although  we 
should  now  think  the  kind  then  used  the  reverse  of 
comfortable,  it  ranked  as  such  a  luxury  that  when 
Jane  Austen  was  ill,  she  dutifully  forbore  to  use  the 
only  one  in  the  house  because  it  would  be  depriving 
her  mother  of  its  solace. 

Finally,  it  was  a  day  when  babies  were  farmed  out, 
and  we  shudder  to  think  of  the  possibilities  surround- 
ing Jane's  case;  for,  had  she  been  exchanged  like 
the  babies  of  the  comic  operas,  and  as  Evelina  was 

1  Lounger,  No.  10. 


Her  Place  379 

exchanged  by  Dame  Green,  where  would  have  been 
the  Jane  Austen  whom  we  know?  ^ 

^  For  full  accounts  of  the  customs  and  manners  of  the  times,  see 
Lecky's  '  History,'  vols.  i.  and  vi.,  Fairholt's  '  History  of  Costume,' 
Andrew's  '  Eighteenth  Century,'  Wraxall's  *  Memoirs,'  and  other 
authorities,  not  omitting  the  invaluable  Annual  Registers. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  learn  that  Miss  Austen  received  about  ;^700 
for  all  her  books  []'  A  Publisher  and  His  Friends.  Memoir  and 
Correspondence  of  the  late  John  Murray,'  by  Samuel  Smiles, 
LL.D.,  2  vols.,  London  :  John  Murray,  vol.  i.,  p.  283];  a  sum  which, 
of  course,  would  have  been  materially  increased  had  she  begun  to 
publish  earlier.  To  those  desirous  of  information  concerning  editions : 
The  Messrs.  Bentley  and  Sons  were  regarded  for  some  time  as  the 
authorized  publishers  of  the  novels,  they  having  bought  the  copy- 
rights some  seventy  years  ago.  This  edition  contains  '  Lady  Susan,' 
'The  Watsons,'  and  Mr.  Austen-Leigh's  'Life.*  It  is  not  illustrated, 
except  for  some  fine  steel  frontispieces,  and  Jane  Austen  pre-emi- 
nently needs  illustrating.  A  very  pretty  edition  is  that  published  by 
Messrs.  J.  M.  Dent  &  Co.  with  colored  prints  by  Cook;  and  the  set 
published  by  Macmillan,  illustrated  by  Brock  and  Thomson,  and  with 
introductions  by  Austin  Dobson,  is  also  attractive.  Messrs.  Little, 
Brown,  &  Co.  issue  an  excellent  edition,  including  the  supplementary 
works  and  the  Memoir,  which  are  omitted  in  the  Macmillan  and 
Dent  volumes. 


B.  — HER  WONDERFUL  CHARM 


The  simile  of  miniature  painting  which  has  so 
frequently  been  applied  to  her  work  is  her  own  inven- 
tion, occurring  in  the  letter  to  her  nephew  which  we 
have  already  quoted,  and  in  which  she  contrasts  his 
"  strong,  manly,  vigorous  sketches,  full  of  variety  and 
glow"  with  her  own  performance  on  the  "little  bit, 
two  inches  wide,  of  ivory,  on  which  I  work  with  so 
fine  a  brush  as  produces  little  effect  after  much 
labor."  1 

It  is  the  business  of  a  discriminating  criticism  to 
distinguish  between  positive  faults  and  those  nega- 
tions which  are  incidental  to  a  given  manner.  A 
negation  is  not  a  fault.  We  ought  not  to  expect 
large  treatments  and  big  canvases  of  a  genius  whose 
forte  is  evidently  the  "  two  inches  wide  of  ivory." 
If  we  have  a  proper  sense  of  proportion,  the  "  effect  " 
will  not  be  "  little  "  because  physically  small,  but  will 
be  as  large,  in  relation  to  its  medium,  as  one  of  the 
wall-covering  pictures  of  Benjamin  West. 

The  negations  must  be  pointed  out,  however,  for 
no  one's  place  in  history  is  fully  comprehended  until 
the  omissions  as  well  as  the  commissions  are  under- 
stood.    Let  us  take  the  two  together. 

Much  of  the  failure  to  properly  measure  Miss 
Austen's  work  is  due  to  a  misapprehension  of  the 

1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  310. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  381 

nature  of  a  miniature.  It  is  not  so  much  a  question 
of  reduced  scale  as  it  is  of  fineness  of  execution. 
The  space  is  limited,  of  necessity ;  and  not  to  wander 
outside  the  confines  requires  a  delicate  self-restraint 
which,  constantly  applied,  is  likely  to  interfere  with 
enthusiasm :  and  as  enthusiasm,  in  youth  at  least,  is 
apt  to  destroy  perspective,  the  restraint  has  —  with 
whatever  regrettable  losses  may  flow  from  the  check- 
ing —  a  strong  tendency  to  heighten  the  value  of 
the  art. 

"  Three  or  four  families  in  a  country  village  is  the 
very  thing  to  work  on,"  Miss  Austen  says,  in  one  of 
her  charming  letters  of  advice.-^  This,  as  we  know, 
was  her  own  method,  from  which  she  never  varied. 
She  did  not"  create  "  eccentric  characters,  like  Smollet 
and  Dickens  ;  there  are  no  Lismahagos  nor  Mrs. 
Havishams  in  her  books,  but  only  the  every-day 
people  of  an  English  community.  Her  work  is  imme- 
diately recognized  as  typical ;  and  one  feels  that  Mr. 
Elton  stands  for  numerous  clergymen  whose  spiritual 
descendants  may  be  found  to  this  day  in  every  dio- 
cese. In  the  Quarterly  article  above  referred  to, 
Scott  points  out  that  the  nature  imitated  by  the 
former  novelists  "  was,  as  the  French  say,  la  belle 
nature^  involving  an  exaggerated  sentimentalism. 
"  He  who  paints  from  le  bean  id^al,"  concludes  Sir 
Walter,  "  if  his  scenes  and  sentiments  are  striking  and 
interesting,  is  in  a  great  measure  exempted  from 
the  difficult  task  of  reconciling  them  with  the  or- 
dinary probabilities  of  life ;  but  he  who  paints  a 
scene  of  common  occurrence  places  his  composition 
within  that  extensive  range  of  criticism  which  general 
experience  offers  to  every  reader." 

1  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  312. 


382  Jane  Austen 

But  here  the  objection  is  offered  that  this  confined 
view  is  too  narrow.  Madame  de  Stael,  with  her  eyes 
on  four  nations,  thinks  this  village  study  viilgaire. 
Miss  Bronte,  not  finding  in  her  any  reflection  of  her 
own  spiritual  unrest,  deems  her  "  only  shrewd  and 
observant."  It  is  true  that  the  age  is  partially  respon- 
sible for  negative  shortcomings.  The  age  makes  the 
men;  but  the  greatest  men  help  to  make  the  age. 
Miss  Austen  was  not  supereminently  greater  than  her 
times,  as  the  greatest  writers  have  been ;  but  she  was 
superior  to  her  times,  as  all  great  writers  are, — 
superior  in  her  own  peculiar  field. 


II 

The  brutal  coarseness  of  the  earlier  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  been  only  partially  bettered 
in  Miss  Austen's  time,  and  the  finer  ideals  following 
the  transition  had  not  yet  taken  full  possession  of 
many  minds.  It  was  still  a  day  when  the  recollections 
of  a  Lawrence  Sterne  in  the  pulpit  —  in  two  pulpits, 
in  fact  —  could  be  regarded  with  amused  indifference, 
but  not  yet  a  day  which  could  have  understood  the 
earnestness  of  a  Charles  Kingsley.^  It  was  a  day 
when  religious  observance  was  so  rare  that  Admiral 
Francis  Austen  was  referred  to  as  "  the  officer  who 

1  There  could  be  no  stronger  contrast  between  that  day  and  this 
than  the  fact  that  the  drawing-room  in  which  '  Emma '  and  '  Persua- 
sion '  were  written  is  now  the  reading-room  of  a  laborers'  club.  The  idea 
still  prevailed  —  Cowper's  idea,  Goldsmith's  idea  —  that  if  God  made 
the  country  and  man  made  the  town,  the  place  for  good  men,  and 
especially  "  men  of  God,"  was  the  country,  —  a  very  comfortable, 
snug  idea  indeed,  and  one  that  saved  the  clergy  a  vast  deal  of 
trouble. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  383 

kneeled  at  church ;  "  ^  when  mothers  corrected  their 
daughters  by  reading  to  them  extracts  from  the 
*  Mirror,'  and  the  favorite  gospel  was  that  according 
to  Henry  Mackenzie.  It  was  also  a  day  when  livings 
were  bought  by  the  highest  bidder,  Miss  Austen's 
father  having  had  one  of  his  bought  for  him  by  an 
uncle,  and  another  given  him  by  a  cousin ;  ^  and  a 
day  when  the  utmost  worldliness  controlled  all  grades 
of  the  clergy.  The  awakening  of  the  English  con- 
science was  of  a  very  slow  growth.  Mr.  Russell  tells 
how  the  proposal  of  certain  clergymen  to  improve 
themselves  in  their  profession  was  met  by  a  brother 
priest:  "When  the  neighboring  parsons  first  tried  to 
get  up  a  periodical  clerical  meeting  for  the  study  of 
theology,  he  responded  genially  to  the  suggestion, 
'  Oh,  yes,  I  think  it  sounds  a  capital  thing,  and  I  sup- 
pose we  shall  finish  up  with  a  rubber  and  a  bit  of 
supper,' "  ^  If  there  were  not  so  many  "  squires  in 
orders"  as  formerly,  the  bishop  was  still  a  prince, 
travelling  in  a  coach  and  six,  with  his  wife  and  daugh- 
ters following  in  a  humbler  carriage,  to  mark  the  dis- 
tinction between  an  apostle  and  his  female  connections. 
It  was  the  day  of  the  "  Greek  play  bishops,"  —  some- 
times "  all  Greek  and  greediness,"  like  Parson  Lingon's. 
Even  Sydney  Smith,  who  could  be  witty  at  the  ex- 
pense of  missionary  efforts,  finds  the  indifference  of 
an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  too  much  for  him  :  "  A 
proxy  to  vote,  if  you  please,  a  proxy  to  consent  to 
arrangement  of  estates  if  wanted ;  but  a  proxy  sent 
down  in  a  Canterbury  fly  to  take  the  Creator  to  wit- 

^  Austen-Leigh,  p.  185. 
2  lb.,  p.  176. 

8  '  Collections  and  Recollections.'    By  one  who  has  kept  a  Diary. 
Harper  &  Bros.,  New  York  and  London,  1898,  p.  63. 


384  J^i^c  Austen 

ness  that  the  Archbishop,  detained  in  town  by  busi- 
ness or  pleasure,  will  never  violate  that  foundation  of 
piety  over  which  he  presides  —  all  this  seems  to  me 
an  act  of  the  most  extraordinary  indolence  ever 
recorded  in  history."  ^ 

It  was  an  age  of  utilitarianism.  Johnson's  voice 
was  still  the  most  powerful  in  the  land,  although 
Johnson  himself  was  dead.  The  doctor  belonged  to 
the  old  school,  and  had  no  affiliations  with  the  new  and 
brighter  sympathies  just  dawning  into  life.  He  was 
the  prose  Pope,  and  he  was  the  pope  of  prose,  making 
of  the  Rambler  a  heavy  supplement  to  the  Spectator. 

Yet  religion  was  not  quite  dead,  and  a  deeper  note 
than  the  purely  utilitarian  was  being  occasionally 
struck.  As  early  as  1739  the  first  foundling,  and  in 
1769  the  first  Magdalen,  hospital  were  founded.  Law's 
*  Serious  Call'  had  done  its  work,  and  John  Wesley 
was  embarked  on  his  great  enterprise.  During  Jane 
Austen's  lifetime,  the  first  Factory  Act  was  passed, 
remedying  the  terrible  evils  of  child-labor ;  and  par- 
liamentary inquiry  into  the  state  of  the  prisons  had, 
many  years  previously,  prepared  the  way  for  Howard's 
magnificent  crusade.  The  first  Sunday-school  was 
started  four  years  before  her  birth. 

And  as  a  renewed  earnestness  in  religion  is,  if  it  be 
of  the  vital  quality,  always  accompanied  by  philan- 
thropic effort,  so  also,  in  such  a  day  may  be  looked 
for  a  renascence  of  commercial  glory  and  a  fresh 
spring  of  poetic  inspiration.  This  was  the  day  which 
saw  the  introduction  of  the  spinning-jenny  and  the 
elevation  of  British  pottery  to  the  dignity  of  a  fine 
art.  In  1785  Pitt  reckoned  the  number  of  persons 
engaged  in  England  in  cotton  manufacture  at  eighty 

1  '  Collections  and  Recollections,'  p  60. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  385 

thousand  ;  and  in  the  same  year  we  have  Wedgworth's 
statement  that  between  fifteen  and  twenty  thousand 
workmen  were  employed  in  his  potteries.  The  brain 
of  James  Watt  was  big  with  the  birth  of  steam,  and 
there  were  already  several  hundred  miles  of  navigable 
canals  in  England. 

The  nature  of  beauty  was  beginning  to  be  under- 
stood once  more;  and  the  search  of  it  for  its  own 
sake,  and  for  the  revelations  back  of  it,  was  slowly 
substituting  for  the  didactic  and  polished  artifice  of 
Pope  a  kindling  passion  for  the  absolute  and  the  veri- 
table. Beauty  passed  from  her  service  as  a  hand- 
maid to  her  kingdom  as  a  queen.  We  hear  the  first 
notes  of  it  in  Cowper  and  Burns,  although  there  is  a 
presage  of  the  dawn  in  Gray  and  Thomson.  The 
greatest  poets  of  the  last  one  hundred  years  were 
contemporaries  of  Jane  Austen:  'Tam  O'Shanter* 
was  published  in  1793  ;  the  first  two  cantos  of 
'  Childe  Harold '  were  published  five  years  before ;  the 
'  Revolt  of  Islam,'  the  year  of,  and  *  Endymion,'  the 
year  after,  her  death.  This  seizure  by  beauty,  taking 
the  place  of  the  artificial  employment  of  beauty,  ran 
to  its  extremest  length  in  Shelley,  who  fled  from  it  as 
a  thing  which  one  could  not  gaze  upon  and  live,  and  in 
Keats,  who,  crying  "  Beauty  is  truth,"  looked  into  its 
face  and  died ;  and  this  idea  of  subjection,  not  by 
arbitrary  choice,  but  of  natural  necessity,  still  throbs 
in  modern  poetry,  one  of  whose  followers  has  thus 
expressed  and  defended  it: 

The  eternal  slaves  of  beauty 
Are  the  masters  of  the  world. 

And  the  fuller  and  saner  music  of  Wordsworth, 
gathering  into  itself  the  deep  meaning  of  a  life  irra- 

25 


386  Jane  Austen 

diated  with  intimations  from  "  before  and  after," 
gently  impressed  the  new  Idea  into  a  loving  com- 
panionship with  the  poet  who,  in  that  he  was  not 
driven  mad  by  it,  was  its  master,  and  yet  a  beauty 
which,  in  that  he  did  not  toy  with  it,  was  his  queen. 
It  could  have  been  said  of  Cowper  and  Crabbe  —  and 
therefore  it  could  not  have  been  said  by  them  — 

A  primrose  by  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him 
And  it  was  nothing  more. 


Ill 

Now,  if  Jane  Austen  had  reflected  the  larger  im- 
pulses whose  faint  stirrings  were  beginning  to  be 
heard,  she  would  not  to-day  be  praised  for  the  quali- 
ties which  got  their  excellence  from  this  denial.  It 
was  not  from  any  sympathy  with  the  poor  that  she 
admired  Crabbe  and  playfully  said  she  could  fancy 
herself  his  wife;  it  was  doubtless  because  of  her 
pleasure  in  his  orderly  sense  of  observation.  Not 
much  of  this  newness  found  its  way  into  her  life.  As 
she  knew  it,  and  as  most  of  the  people  around  her 
knew  it,  it  was  still  a  complacent  age  which  had 
not  begun  to  question  itself  very  seriously ;  still  the 
age  of  the  copy-book  maxim  that  the  proper  study 
of  mankind  is  man ;  and  because  this  study  was  of 
Man  in  the  abstract,  and  not  of  men  as  brethren  of 
one  compassionable  family,  it  was  still  artificial  and 
ornamental.  And  yet  within  her  sphere  she  rose 
superior  to  the  artifice,  being  the  first  to  escape  from 
affectation  without  off"ering  a  brutal  frankness  in  its 
stead.     She  became  the  pioneer  of  refined  natural- 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  387 

ness  in  fiction,  neither  Richardson,  nor  Fielding,  nor 
Miss  Burney,  having  attained  that  honor,  and  Miss 
Edgeworth  failing  to  accomplish  it  with  charm. 

Hers  is  a  true  microcosm  because  it  perfectly  re- 
flects her  macrocosm,  albeit  the  "  three  or  four 
families  "  comprise  it.  She  does  not  passionately  iden- 
tify herself  with  any  of  her  characters ;  none  of  her 
books  is  written  in  the  first  person,  and,  nervously 
apprehensive  of  its  possible  absurdities,  she  is  careful 
to  avoid  Richardson's  and  Miss  Burney's  error  of  put- 
ting the  narrative  into  the  form  of  correspondence.^ 
On  the  contrary,  Miss  Austen  is  an  amused  looker-on 
in  Vienna,  not  personally  concerned,  and  not  looking 
on  as  a  student.  Had  Charlotte  Bronte  written 
*  Mansfield  Park,'  Fanny's  story  would  have  been 
conceived  in  an  atmosphere  of  rebellion.  Julia 
Bertram  would  have  become  Miss  Ingram,  and  the 
little  dependant  would  have  suffered  from  her  cousins 
what  Jane  Eyre  suffered  from  the  Reeds.  Miss 
Austen,  to  be  sure,  makes  us  feel  her  pity  for  Fanny, 
and  sufficiently  identifies  her  moral  support  with  her 
heroine's  actions ;  but  it  is  wholly  impersonal,  and 
with  all  the  drawbacks  to  Fanny's  happiness  at 
Mansfield  Park,  the  reader  sees  that  she  is  happier 
there  than  she  would  be  in  any  other  place.^  George 
Eliot  would  have  been  tempted  to  force  Fanny  back 

1  Mr.  Villars  must  have  devoted  all  his  waking  hours  to  the  reading 
of  Evelina's  letters,  and  the  consumption  of  time  in  writing  such 
voluminous  epistles  would  have  left  no  time  for  the  events  they 
chronicle. 

'  Governesses,  with  Miss  Austen,  are  not  necessarily  unhappy. 
Miss  Taylor's  position  was  an  enviable  one ;  and  while  there  is  criti- 
cism of  the  method  of  hiring  them  in  '  Emma,'  the  despairing  attitude 
of  Miss  Fairfax  is  almost  wholly  due  to  her  unfulfilled  engagement 
with  Frank  Churchill. 


388  Jane  Austen 

to  her  father's  disreputable  home  on  the  plea  of 
family  duty  and  social  helpfulness ;  and  her  unhappi- 
ness  in  that  great  author's  hands  would  have  been  in 
the  struggle  between  taste  and  duty.  Miss  Austen's 
viewpoint  was  not  harassed  by  the  pressure  of  al- 
truistic ethics,  and  thus  avoided  the  initial  errors  to 
which  authors  suffering  under  their  too  urgent  claims 
are  liable  —  errors  of  unnecessary  sacrifice,  and  errors, 
therefore,  on  the  artistic  side,  against  taste.  Miss 
Bronte's  indignation  frequently  stands  in  the  way  of 
her  humor,  which,  indeed,  is  her  chief  defect.  We 
have  seen  that  Tennyson  ranks  Miss  Austen  with 
Shakspere,  and  others  have  not  stumbled  at  this 
bold  assertion.  Shakspere  was  pre-eminently  great 
in  three  things  :  range,  depth,  and  impersonal  detach- 
ment; and  the  comparison  undoubtedly  refers  only 
to  this  last  quality,  for  in  that  she  was  certainly  more 
Shaksperean  than  either  Charlotte  Bronte  or  George 
Eliot.  That  necessitates  humor;  and  the  laughter 
which  springs  from  such  a  humor  was  absent  in 
Currer  Bell.  George  Eliot's  superiority,  in  general, 
to  both  is  her  combination  of  the  strong  imagination 
of  the  one  with  the  fine  flow  of  humor  of  the  other, 
except  when  her  kinship  of  loving  feeling  with  some 
great  idea  confused  the  imagination  and  obstructed 
the  humor.  The  faults  of  each  were  faults  of  great- 
ness ;  and  Miss  Austen,  though  more  Shaksperean  in 
her  impersonal  freedom,  was  less  great  because  of 
this  excellence  than  they. 

The  outside  world  does  not  press,  nor  the  inside 
passion.  The  sanest  genius  knows  its  limitations  and 
does  not  transgress  them.  It  is  not  that  each  char- 
acter is  an  end  in  itself;  she  had  a  well-defined  moral 
scheme,  and  one  has  only  to  remember  the  contrasted 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  389 

sisters  in  *  Sense  and  Sensibility '  to  understand  how 
thoughtless  selfishness  is  played  against  considerate 
self-abnegation  in  her  novels.  Marianne  expresses 
astonishment  that  Elinor  should  have  known  of  Ed- 
ward's secret  engagement  to  Lucy  for  four  months 
and  kept  silent.  "  Four  months  !  and  yet  you  loved 
him  !  "  "  Yes,  but  I  did  not  love  only  him."  If  she 
was  ever  tempted  —  but,  of  course,  she  never  was  — 
to  lengthen  the  links  of  the  chain  beyond  the  indi- 
vidual family  to  the  big  social  family  outside,  she  was 
wise  to  decline  the  invitation ;  for  what  was  a  mission 
with  George  Eliot  would  have  been  only  an  experi- 
mental tour  de  force  with  Jane  Austen. 

Hence  we  should  not  regret  her  "  limited  "  view,  as 
it  is  all  the  more  perfect  for  that  reason.  If  there  is 
no  attempt  to  reach  beyond  one's  range,  it  is  not  a 
defect  to  be  "  defective"  in  range.  She  never  at- 
tempted what  she  was  unable  to  perform;  and  the 
French  critic,  looking  across  the  Channel  at  the 
amazing  precocities  of  children  in  English  fiction, 
could  not  possibly  include  Jane  Austen  in  his  aston- 
ishment: "  C'est  seulement  en  pays  protestant  que 
vous  trouverez  un  roman  employe  tout  entier  a 
decrire  le  progres  du  sentiment  moral  dans  una 
enfant  de  douze  ans."  ^ 


IV 

A  miniaturist,  with  the  definite  object  of  a  por- 
trait before  him,  has,  by  reason  of  his  reduced  scale, 
no  room  for  extraneous  matter.     Character  must  be 

1  '  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Anglaise.'  Par  H.  Taine,  Paris : 
Libraire  Hachette  et  Cie,  1895,     Tome  iv.,  p.  474. 


390  Jane  Austen 

emphasized  without  outside  help.  In  no  other  style 
of  work  is  nicety  of  expression,  is  delicacy  of  detail, 
so  necessary ;  and,  consequently,  is  the  least  failure 
so  noticeable.  There  are  many  world-famous  pic- 
tures of  the  heroic  size  which  have  for  centuries 
ranked  among  the  wonders  of  the  world,  but  which, 
in  certain  minute  details,  may  be  subjected  to  un- 
favorable criticism:  the  grandeur  of  the  general  exe- 
cution smothers  the  faults  in  the  largeness  of  the 
canvas.  But  in  the  "  exquisite  touch,"  there  is  no 
escape  in  size,  and  a  minor  instantly  becomes  a 
major  fault.  Miss  Austen  almost  never  erred  in  this 
essential.  There  is,  in  the  first  place,  no  padding  in 
her  stories ;  there  are  no  superfluous  characters.  One 
might  say  that  there  is  a  sister  or  two  too  many  in  some 
of  the  novels,  but  further  consideration  clearly  shows  a 
reason  for  each.  Even  Mary  Bennet  is  necessary  as 
an  offset  to  the  others,  her  pedantic  nonsense  adding 
an  extra  touch  of  comedy  to  the  situation  and  height- 
ening the  contrast  between  the  numerous  kinds  of 
foolishness  that  may  exist  in  any  one  family.  In  this 
particular  family,  Mary  is  one  of  the  vehicles  of  Mr. 
Bennet's  irony,  and  thus  indirectly  the  means  of 
expressing  the  author's  satire,  for  in  '  Pride  and 
Prejudice '  the  author  speaks  chiefly  through  Mr. 
Bennet  and  Elizabeth. 

"What  say  you,  Mary?  for  you  are  a  young  lady  of 
deep  reflection,  I  know,  and  read  great  books  and  make 
extracts." 

They  are  discussing  Mr.  Darcy's  behavior  at  the  ball. 
Miss  Lucas  defends  that  particular  instance  of"  pride." 
"  I  could  easily  forgive  his  pride,"  says  the  injured 
Elizabeth,  "  if  he  had  not  mortified  mine." 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  391 

"  Pride,"  observed  Mary,  who  piqued  herself  upon  the 
solidity  of  her  reflections,  "  is  a  very  common  failing,  I 
believe.  By  all  that  I  have  ever  read,  I  am  convinced  that 
it  is  very  common  indeed ;  that  human  nature  is  particularly 
prone  to  it,  and  that  there  are  very  few  of  us  who  do  not 
cherish  a  feeling  of  self-complacency  on  the  score  of  some 
quality  or  other,  real  or  imaginary.  Vanity  and  pride  are 
different  things,  though  the  words  are  often  used  synony- 
mously. A  person  may  be  proud  without  being  vain. 
Pride  relates  more  to  our  opinion  of  ourselves,  vanity  to 
what  we  would  have  others  think  of  us." 

And  so  we  are  prepared  for  the  characteristic 
opinions  of  the  members  of  the  home  circle  over  Mr. 
Collins'  remarkable  letter  announcing  his  coming,  in 
which  he  speaks  of  himself  as  — 

"...  so  fortunate  as  to  be  distinguished  by  the  patronage 
of  the  Right  Honorable  Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh,  widow 
of  Sir  Louis  de  Bourgh,  whose  bounty  and  beneficence  has 
preferred  me  to  the  valuable  rectory  of  this  parish,  where  it 
shall  be  my  earnest  endeavor  to  demean  myself  with  grate- 
ful respect  towards  her  ladyship,  and  be  ever  ready  to  per- 
form those  rites  and  ceremonies  which  are  instituted  by  the 
Church  of  England.  As  a  clergyman,  moreover,  I  feel  it 
my  duty  to  promote  and  establish  the  blessing  of  peace  in 
all  famihes  within  the  reach  of  my  influence  ;  and  on  these 
grounds  I  flatter  myself  that  my  present  overtures  of  good 
will  are  highly  commendable,  and  that  the  circumstance 
of  my  being  next  in  the  entail  of  Longbourne  estate  will  be 
kindly  overlooked  on  your  side,  and  not  lead  you  to  reject 
the  offered  olive-branch.  ...  If  you  should  have  no  objec- 
tion to  receive  me  into  your  house,  I  propose  myself  the 
satisfaction  of  waiting  on  you  and  your  family,  Monday, 
November  i8th,  by  four  o'clock,  and  shall  probably  trespass 


392  Jane  Austen 

upon  your  hospitality  till  the  Saturday  se'  nnight  following, 
which  I  can  do  without  any  inconvenience,  as  Lady  Cathe- 
rine is  far  from  objecting  to  my  occasional  absence  on  a 
Sunday,  provided  that  some  other  clergyman  is  engaged  to 
do  the  duty  of  the  day.  ..." 

Mr.  Bennet  chuckles  over  the  possibilities  of  a  fresh 
field  of  amusement  in  this  visit.  "  Can  he  be  a 
sensible  man,  sir?"  asks  Elizabeth. 

"  No,  my  dear,  I  think  not.  I  have  great  hopes  of  find- 
ing him  quite  the  reverse.  There  is  a  mixture  of  servility 
and  self-importance  in  his  letter  which  promises  well.  I 
am  impatient  to  see  him." 

Elizabeth  is  "  chiefly  struck  with  the  extraordinary 
deference  for  Lady  Catherine "  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Collins,  and  with  "  his  kind  intention  of  christening, 
marrying  and  burying,  his  parishioners  whenever  it 
were  required."  Catherine  and  Lydia  are  not  inter- 
ested, since  for  several  weeks  they  "  had  received 
pleasure  from  the  society"  of  no  man  who  did  not 
appear  in  a  scarlet  coat. 

*'  In  point  of  composition,"  said  Mary,  "  his  letter  does 
not  seem  defective.  The  idea  of  the  olive-branch  perhaps 
is  not  wholly  new,  yet  I  think  it  is  well-expressed." 

We  surely  could  not  spare  Mary  Bennet. 


V 

Her  sense  of  humor  kept  her  safely  within  these 
narrow  confines.  No  one  ever  abided  by  the  knowl- 
edge of  his  limitations  more  consistently  than  did 
Miss  Austen.  To  the  egregious  Mr.  Clarke's  sug- 
gestion that  she  should  attempt  the  delineation  of  a 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  393 

clergyman  like  Beattie's  minstrel,  she  very  sensibly 
replies  that  it  is  quite  beyond  her  powers.  "  A  clas- 
sical education,  or  at  any  rate  a  very  extensive 
acquaintance  with  English  literature  ancient  and 
modern  appears  to  me  quite  indispensable  for  the 
person  who  would  do  any  justice  to  your  clergyman ; 
and  I  think  I  may  safely  boast  myself  to  be,  with  all 
possible  vanity,  the  most  unlearned  and  uninformed 
female  who  ever  dared  to  be  an  authoress."  ^  The  ir- 
repressible secretary  to  H.  R.  H.  then  proposes  "  an 
historical  romance  illustrative  of  the  august  house  of 
Coburg,"  that  gentleman  having  just  been  appointed 
to  a  chaplaincy  in  that  house.  "  But  I  could  no  more 
write  a  romance  than  an  epic  poem,"  she  says.  "  I 
could  not  sit  seriously  down  to  write  a  serious 
romance  under  any  other  motive  than  to  save  my 
life ;  and  if  it  were  indispensable  for  me  to  keep  it  up 
and  never  relax  into  laughing  at  myself  or  at  other 
people,  I  am  sure  I  should  be  hung  before  I  had 
finished  the  first  chapter."  ^ 

This  power  of  self-restraint,  revealing  in  such  a 
very  unusual  degree  a  perception  of  boundaries, 
assures  one  almost  in  advance  that,  within  the  boun- 
daries, the  work  is  also  critically  excellent.  We  have 
a  right  to  look  for  chastened  expression,  for  a 
holding  in  check  of  all  exaggerations,  for  a  sweet 
intuitive  understanding  of  proportions.  Miss  Austen 
is  the  pre-eminent  mistress  of  taste.  If  order  is 
heaven's  first  law,  this  lady  must  rank  among  the 
hierarchs  of  art,  for  in  no  other  author  is  to  be  found 
a  nicer  perception  of  congruous  beauty  and  a  keener 
discernment  of  symmetry. 

1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  270. 
8  lb.  p.  271. 


394  J^i^c  Austen 

And  this  is  all  the  more  remarkable  in  one  whose 
extraordinary  humorous  perception  would  naturally 
lead  her  to  caricature.  Even  her  avowed  burlesque 
on  the  romantic  school  is  not  exaggerated  beyond 
the  allowed  limits,  and  she  shows  herself  a  true  sister 
to  Fielding  in  that  her  attitude  towards  her  subject 
does  not  permit  her  to  rest  in  satire,  but  compels  her 
to  create  a  positive  interest  in  the  characters  aside 
from  the  types  they  are  intended  to  ridicule. 
'  Northanger  Abbey '  may  be  farcical  comedy  in 
places,  but  it  is  never  mere  farce.  We  have  already 
contrasted  Miss  Austen  with  Miss  Burney  and  Miss 
Edgeworth,  in  regard  to  this  restraining  excellence 
of  taste.  No  other  woman  writer  of  her  time  had  this 
gift  in  an  equal  degree.  Miss  Ferrier,  for  example, 
must  be  grouped  with  Smollett  and  Dickens  as  a 
farce  —  or  broadly  comic,  rather  than  with  Jane 
Austen  as  a  high-comedy,  author;  as  may  be  seen 
by  a  comparison  of  her  Dr.  Redgill  with  Mr.  Collins. 
There  is  the  constant  danger  of  unwarranted  exag- 
geration in  caricature,  which  is  what  makes  the 
comic  papers  so  frequently  unjust.  Caricature  is  al- 
most always  exaggeration;  yet  Miss  Austen  could 
burlesque  with  such  delicate  art  as  to  avoid  its 
objectionable  qualities.  She  knows  how  to  amus- 
ingly emphasize  a  foible  without  amplifications  beyond 
the  range  of  human  probability,  —  a  power  not  gen- 
erally exercised  by  Dickens,  whose  Mrs.  Nickleby, 
for  this  reason,  is  not  nearly  so  convincing  as  Jane's 
Miss  Bates.^ 

^  The  temptation  of  a  too  farcical  portrayal  is  well  shown  is  some 
of  the  pictures  in  the  illustrated  editions  of  Miss  Austen's  novels. 
Mr.  Brock  makes  Mrs.  Bennet  look  a  little  too  like  Mrs.  Gamp  to 
completely  satisfy  our  idea  of  that  lady,  who  doubtless  looked  wise 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  395 

Miss  Austen  reverts  to  nature.  The  tendency  of 
romance  towards  the  grand  style  is  always  a  reflection 
of  the  overweening  artificiality  of  the  age.  In  the 
absence  of  true  standards,  the  attempt  at  the  lofty 
results  in  the  top-lofty,  and  instead  of  the  heroic  we 
get  the  stilted.  The  consequent  absurdities  awaken 
the  comic  geniuses,  who  become  the  saviors  of  art 
through  the  medium  of  ridicule;  and — to  let  the 
greatest  of  them  stand  for  all —  Cervantes  grows  into 
a  caricaturist  because  what  he  is  satirizing  is  itself  a 
caricature  of  nature.  The  outrage  done  on  nature  is 
avenged  by  nature  through  him.  Fielding  and  Miss 
Austen  are,  each  in  his  and  her  individual  way,  fol- 
lowers in  this  path, — the  latter  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously ;  and  what  the  author  of  *  Joseph  Andrews ' 
accomplishes  with  masculine  coarseness,  the  creator 
of  'Northanger  Abbey 'brings  about  with  refinement 
and  taste.  She  is  a  humorist  on  the  hither  side  of 
Caricature.  "  Taste  "  controls  her,  as  much  as  "  suit  " 
controls  Miss  Bronte,  and  is  the  chief  reason  of  the 
latter's  dislike. 

On  each  side  there  was  much  to  attract,  and  their  ac- 
quaintance so  promised  as  early  an  intimacy  as  good  man- 
ners would  warrant. 

The  three  charges  she  brings  against  Mr.  Price's 
home  are  that  it  is  the  "  abode  of  noise,  disorder,  and 
impropriety."  It  is  not  the  moral  unfitness  of  the 
home  which  disturbs  her  so  much  as  the  unseemli- 

enough,  though  she  talked  so  foolishly.  One  expects  exaggerations 
in  illustrations  to  Dickens,  to  match  the  exaggerations  in  the  text. 
Not  so  with  Miss  Austen,  and  we  would  probably  have  as  deep  a 
quarrel  with  any  picture  of  Elizabeth  as  we  would  have  over  any 
picture  of  Rosalind. 


39^  Jane  Austen 

ness  of  the  impropriety,  which  is  simply  the  outcome 
of  the  noise  and  the  disorder;  and  she  contrasts 
these  with  the  "  elegance,  propriety,  regularity,  har- 
mony "  of  Mansfield  Park.  Fanny  shrinks  from  in- 
troducing her  father  to  Mr.  Crawford. 

He  must  be  ashamed  and  disgusted  altogether.  He 
must  soon  give  her  up,  and  cease  to  have  the  smallest 
inclination  for  the  match ;  and  yet,  though  she  had  been 
so  much  wanting  his  affection  to  be  cured,  this  was  a  sort  of 
cure  that  would  be  almost  as  bad  as  the  complaint ;  and  I 
believe  there  is  scarcely  a  young  lady  in  the  United  King- 
doms who  would  not  rather  put  up  with  the  misfortune  of 
being  sought  by  a  clever,  agreeable  man,  than  have  him 
driven  away  by  the  vulgarity  of  her  nearest  relatives. 

It  would  almost  seem  that  "  by  taste  ye  are  saved  " 
is  her  sufficient  gospel.  It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
keynote  of  her  disapproval  of  the  Spectator.  Through 
this  orderly  sense  she  chiefly  regards  nature. 

Her  pleasure  in  the  walk  must  arise  from  the  exercise  and 
the  day,  from  the  view  of  the  last  smiles  of  the  year  upon 
the  tawny  leaves  and  withered  hedges,  and  from  repeating 
to  herself  some  few  of  the  thousand  poetical  descriptions 
extant  of  autumn,  that  season  of  peculiar  and  inexhaustible 
influence  on  the  mind  of  taste  and  tenderness,  that  season 
which  has  drawn  from  every  poet  worthy  of  being  read 
some  attempt  to  description  or  some  lines  of  feeling. 

VI 

There  were,  indeed,  no  artists  of  scenery  in  her 
day;  that  is  a  more  recent  development.  Miss  Bur- 
ney  never  describes  it.  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  highly  wrought 
pictures  are  too  fantastic  to  be  called  representations. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  397 

Take  the  following  instances  at  random  from  two  well- 
known  living  writers,  to  exemplify  the  modern  fond- 
ness for  emphasizing  the  illustrative  value  of  nature  in 
the  scheme  of  the  design : 

It  was  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  the  hottest  hour 
of  the  day  on  that  Sierran  foothill.  The  western  sun  stream- 
ing down  the  mile-long  slope  of  close- set  pine  crests,  had  been 
caught  on  an  outlying  ledge  of  glaring  white  quartz,  covered 
with  mineral  tools  and  debris,  and  seemed  to  have  been 
thrown  into  an  incandescent  rage.  The  air  above  it  shim- 
mered and  became  visible.  A  white  canvas  tent  on  it  was 
an  object  not  to  be  borne  ;  the  steel-tipped  picks  and  shovels, 
intolerable  to  touch  and  eyesight,  and  a  tilted  tin  prospect- 
ing pan,  falling  over,  flashed  out  as  another  sun  of  insuffer- 
able effulgence. 

It  was  autumn,  but  the  morning  was  of  June.  In  the  park 
beyond  the  ha-ha  the  deer  lay  laagered,  twitching  fly-infested 
ears.  On  the  rail  fencing  the  lawn  from  the  main  road,  a 
dozen  feet  below,  a  belated  fly-catcher  sat  and  looked  over 
the  brooding  vale.  Far  away  a  church  spire  pricked  up 
against  the  blue ;  and  through  the  still  noon  the  stertorous 
breathing  of  a  little  pompous  engine  travelled  noisily. 

The  eighteenth-century  view  was  entirely  different. 
Instead  of  a  particularized  picture,  it  contents  itself 
with  references  to  the  "animated  charms"  of  nature. 
The  poets  of  Miss  Austen's  time  had  not  yet  im- 
pressed upon  the  prose  writers  the  idea  of  its  kinship 
with  man's  personal  longings  and  griefs.  Here  again* 
Miss  Austen  does  not  rise  above  her  age.  It  is  not 
enough  to  say  that  her  theory  of  art  forbade  the  inter- 
ruption of  her  tale  with  descriptions  of  scenery.  She  is 
not  a  poetic  artist ;  and  a  real  absence  of  that  passion 


398  Jane  Austen 

for  nature  which  is  usually  linked  with  a  consuming 
personal  attachment  —  regarding  her  as  the  soothing 
mother,  or  finding  similarities  between  her  insensibil- 
ity and  the  cruelties  of  forsaking  love  —  this  real  ab- 
sence is  the  dominant  cause  of  her  emotionless  atti- 
tude ;  for  a  real  presence  would  have  transformed  her 
theory  into  an  acceptance  of  nature  as  we  see  her 
portrayed  in  the  later  literature.  The  love  of  woods 
and  seas  is  too  real  an  emotion  for  any  theory  of  art 
to  restrain. 

Miss  Austen  had  an  appreciation  for  scenery;  she 
had  an  eighteenth-century  regard,  rather  than  a  nine- 
teenth-century love,  for  beauty.  Her  environment 
contributed  its  subduing  influences,  for  the  chalk  hills 
of  North  Hants  are  not  picturesque,  and  a  country 
where  the  "  chief  beauty  "  is  confessedly  the  "  hedge- 
rows "  is  a  country  where  the  beauty  is  confined. 
And  the  girl  who  had  no  keen  personal  disappoint- 
ments to  find  reflecting  images  for  in  nature  would 
doubtless  have  preferred  the  orderly  slopes  of  her 
native  downs  to  the  disturbing  grandeur  of  the  Alps. 

Her  descriptions  are  never  specific.  A  line  of  clifls 
is  simply  "  beautiful."  Different  kinds  of  trees  in 
Lyme  are  referred  to  as  "  the  woody  varieties."  The 
rocks  are  "  romantic."  Spring's  progress  is  the  "  prog- 
ress of  vegetation."  A  bank  is  of  "  considerable 
abruptness  and  grandeur."  The  idea  of  comfort  — 
Cowper's  idea  —  is  dominant.  The  beauty  of  the 
situation  of  Mr.  Knightley's  farm  is  apparently  felt, 
but  what  is  emphasized  is  that  it  is  "  favorably  placed 
and  sheltered ;  "  and  the  river  "  makes  a  close  and 
handsome  curve  around  it."  Scenery  is  still  an  orna- 
ment. She  regrets  the  loss  of  the  "  highly  valued  " 
elms  because  they  "  gave  such  an  ornament  "  to  Hall's 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  399 

meadow.^  She  is  not  awed  so  much  as  frankly  dis- 
tressed by  thunder  storms.  "  We  sat  upstairs  and 
had  thunder  and  lightning,  as  usual,"  she  writes,  as  if 
they  were  a  dessert;  and  she  thinks  herself  fortunate 
that  her  fears  are  "  shared  by  the  mistress  of  the  house, 
as  that  procured  blinds  and  candles."  ^  As  typical 
an  example  as  any  of  her  descriptions  of  scenery  is 
that  of  the  view  at  Fonwell : 

It  was  a  sweet  view  —  sweet  to  the  eye  and  mind.  Eng- 
lish verdure,  English  culture,  English  comfort,  seen  under  a 
sun  bright  without  being  oppressive. 

Now,  these  things  are  set  down  without  the  least 
feeling  of  regret.  She  would  not  have  been  the  Jane 
Austen  of  our  regard  otherwise.  The  denials  of 
nature,  it  is  true,  prevent  the  fullest  development,  but 
they  may  heighten  the  excellences  which  exist.  And 
so  far  as  the  mere  absence  of  nature  worship  is  con- 
cerned in  this  lady's  work,  that  is  not  so  important  in 
itself  as  is  its  contributive  value  to  the  general 
characteristics  we  are  considering.  If  it  suggests 
primness,  it  also  hints  at  a  proper  restraint  and  self- 
knowledge  of  limitations.  If  it  seems  cold,  it  at  least 
commends  itself  to  our  judgment  as  wholly  without 
artificiality.  If  it  does  not  show  an  ardent  affection 
for  nature,  even  so  it  is  a  return  to  that  very  nature 
in  its  lack  of  ostentation  and  in  its  clear-eyed  honesty. 
Moreover,  nobody  looks  for  landscape  gardening  in  a 
miniature,  and  we  should  never  forget  that  the  chief 
business  of  a  novelist  is  to  portray  character.  There 
is  really  no  room  for  scenery  in  Miss  Austen's  scheme. 
"  It  was  a  beautiful  evening,  mild  and  still,  and  the 

1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  232. 
*  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  103. 


400  Jane  Austen 

drive  was  as  pleasant  as  the  serenity  of  nature  could 
make  it."  That  is  enough.  The  party  was  returning 
from  Southerton  after  an  unsatisfactory  day ;  and  the 
reader  is  too  much  occupied  with  the  comedy  to  care 
for  the  scene  in  which  it  is  placed. 

"  Well,  Fanny,  this  has  been  a  fine  day  for  you,  upon  my 
word  ! "  said  Mrs.  Norris,  as  they  drove  through  the  park. 
"  Nothing  but  pleasure  from  beginning  to  end  !  I  am  sure 
you  ought  to  be  very  much  obliged  to  your  aunt  Bertram 
and  me  for  contriving  to  let  you  go.  A  pretty  good  day's 
amusement  you  have  had  !  " 

Maria  was  just  discontented  enough  to  say  directly,  "  I 
think  you  have  done  pretty  well  yourself,  ma'am.  Your  lap 
seems  full  of  good  things,  and  here  is  a  basket  of  something 
between  us  which  has  been  knocking  my  elbow  unmercifully." 

"  My  dear,  it  is  only  a  beautiful  little  heath  which  that  nice 
old  gardener  would  make  me  take ;  but  if  it  is  in  your  way 
I  will  have  it  in  my  lap  directly.  There,  Fanny,  you  shall 
carry  that  parcel  for  me  —  take  great  care  of  it  —  do  not  let 
it  fall ;  it  is  a  cream  cheese,  just  like  the  excellent  one  we  had 
at  dinner.  Nothing  would  satisfy  that  good  old  Mrs. 
Whitaker  but  my  taking  one  of  the  cheeses.  I  stood  out  as 
long  as  I  could,  till  the  tears  almost  came  into  her  eyes,  and 
I  knew  that  it  was  just  the  sort  that  my  sister  would  be  de- 
lighted with.  That  Mrs.  Whitaker  is  a  treasure  !  She  was 
quite  shocked  when  I  asked  her  whether  wine  was  allowed  at 
the  second  table,  and  she  has  turned  away  two  housemaids 
for  wearing  white  gowns.  Take  care  of  the  cheese,  Fanny. 
Now  I  can  manage  the  other  parcel  and  the  basket  very 
well." 

"What  else  have  you  been  sponging?"  said  Maria,  half 
pleased  that  Southerton  should  be  so  complimented. 

"  Sponging,  ray  dear !  It  is  nothing  but  four  of  those 
beautiful  pheasants'  eggs,  which  Mrs.  Whitaker  would  quite 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  401 

force  upon  me ;  she  would  not  take  a  denial.  She  said  it  must 
be  such  an  amusement  to  me,  as  she  understood  I  lived  quite 
alone,  to  have  a  few  living  creatures  of  that  sort ;  and  so  to 
be  sure  it  will.  I  shall  get  the  dairymaid  to  set  them  under 
the  first  spare  hen,  and  if  they  come  to  good  I  can  have  them 
moved  to  my  own  house  and  borrow  a  coop ;  and  it  will  be 
a  great  delight  to  me  in  my  lonely  hours  to  attend  to  them. 
And  if  I  have  good  luck,  your  mother  shall  have  some." 

It  was  a  beautiful  evening,  mild  and  still,  and  the  drive  was 
as  pleasant  as  the  serenity  of  nature  could  make  it ;  but  when 
Mrs.  Norris  ceased  speaking  it  was  altogether  a  silent  drive 
to  those  within.  Their  spirits  were  in  general  exhausted ; 
and  to  determine  whether  the  day  had  afforded  most  plea- 
sure or  pain  might  occupy  the  meditations  of  almost  all. 


VII 

Taste,  however,  with  Miss  Austen,  does  not  halt  at 
the  mere  conformities  of  behavior.  The  faculty  of 
discerning  order  is  with  her  the  power  of  relishing 
mental  and  moral  excellence ;  the  elegance  is  of  the 
spirit.  Her  chosen  field  is  comedy,  —  high  comedy. 
Her  stories  are,  I  think,  the  most  delicately  amusing  ever 
written.  There  is  no  storm  and  stress ;  we  do  not  go  to 
them  for  the  solution  of  old  problems,  or  to  have  our 
sympathies  awakened  towards  new  ones.  There  is 
not  a  death  in  all  her  fiction.  There  is  no  broad 
brush  work;  she  never  draws  a  servant.  It  is  the 
ironies  of  life  she  has  to  -deal  with,  and  she  faces  them 
with  their  own  mirror;  — the  ironies,  too,  of  the  life 
she  was  familiar  with,  which  was  the  genteel  life. 
With  a  keen  eye  she  observed  the  frailties  and  follies 
of  the  world  about  her.  That  lay-confessor  of  ladies' 
maids,  Samuel  Richardson,  took  much  pride  in  his 

26 


402  Jane  Austen 

"  rules  of  conduct."     Miss  Austen  turns  her  laughing 
eyes  that  way. 

If  it  be  true,  as  a  celebrated  author  has  maintained,  that 
no  young  lady  can  be  justified  in  falling  in  love  before  the 
gentleman's  love  is  declared,  it  must  be  very  improper  that 
a  young  lady  should  dream  of  a  gentleman  before  the  gen- 
tleman is  first  known  to  have  dreamt  of  her. 

I  trust  it  will  not  be  considered  ungallant  to  call 
attention  to  one  of  the  engaging  foibles  of  the  gentler 
sex,  as  portrayed  by  one  of  its  most  entertaining 
representatives : 

Mrs.  Allen  cannot  boast  similar  triumphs  when 
Mrs.  Thorpe  expatiates  on  the  talents  of  her  sons 
and  the  beauty  of  her  daughters,  but  she  consoles 
herself  with  the  discovery  "  that  the  lace  on  Mrs. 
Thorpe's  pelisse  was  not  half  so  handsome  as  that 
on  her  own." 

She  had  found  some  acquaintances ;  had  been  so  lucky, 
too,  as  to  find  in  them  the  family  of  a  most  worthy  old 
friend ;  and,  as  the  completion  of  good  fortune,  had  found 
these  friends  by  no  means  so  expensively  dressed  as  herself. 

This  is  the  Mrs.  Allen  who  was 

.  .  .  never  satisfied  with  the  day  unless  she  spent  the 
chief  of  it  by  the  side  of  Mrs.  Thorpe  in  what  they  called 
conversation. 

She  understood  the  evanescent  quality  of  girl- 
friendships  : 

.  .  .  overtook  the  second  Miss  Thorpe  as  she  was  loiter- 
ing towards  Edgar's  Buildings  between  two  of  the  sweetest 
girls  in  the  world,  who  had  been  her  dear  friends  all  the 
morning. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  403 

*  Northanger  Abbey '  being  a  skit  at  the  '  Mys- 
teries of  Udolpho,'  no  opportunity  is  lost  to  poke 
fun  at  its  romanticism.  Concerning  the  room  of 
the  late  Mrs.  Tilney: 

"  It  remains  as  it  was,  I  suppose?  "  said  she  in  a  tone  of 
feeling. 

"Yes,  entirely." 

"  And  how  long  ago  may  it  be  that  your  mother  died?  " 

"  She  has  been  dead  these  nine  years."  And  nine  years, 
Catherine  knew,  was  a  trifle  of  time  compared  with  what 
generally  elapsed  after  the  death  of  an  injured  wife,  before 
her  room  was  put  to  rights. 

The  Tilneys  called  for  her  at  the  appointed  time,  and  no 
new  difficulty  arising,  no  sudden  recollection,  no  unexpected 
summons,  no  impertinent  intrusions  to  disconcert  their 
measures,  my  heroine  was  most  unnaturally  able  to  fulfil  her 
engagement,  though  it  was  made  with  the  hero  himself. 

This  gentle  intrusion  of  common-sense  into  an 
artificial  sentimentalism,  dissolving  the  mists  of  un- 
reality into  a  clear  atmosphere,  is  a  new  note  in 
fiction,  and  is  only  equalled  in  subsequent  success 
by  Thackeray.  Miss  Austen's  heroines,  like  that 
master's  Charlotte,  "went  on  eating  bread  and 
butter,"  to  the  disappointment  of  the  devotees  of 
"sensibility,"  who  wanted  them  to  be  engaged  in 
more  exciting  pursuits. 

And  who  that  has  read  this  book  can  ever  forget 
the  delightful  chapter  in  which  Catherine  refers  to 
"  something  very  shocking  "  which  "  will  soon  come 
out  in  London,"  —  "  more  horrible  than  anything  we 
have  met  with  yet," — "uncommonly  dreadful.  I 
shall   expect  murder  and  everything  of  the   kind." 


404  Jaiic  Austen 

And  Miss  Tilney,  misunderstanding  her,  hopes  that 
the  account  is  exaggerated,  and  that  "  if  such  a  design 
is  known  beforehand,  proper  measures  will  be  taken 
by  government  to  prevent  its  coming  to  effect." 
Then  Henry,  perceiving  the  error,  has  sport  at  the 
expense  of  each.  "  Miss  Morland,  do  not  mind 
what  he  says ;  but  have  the  goodness  to  satisfy  me 
as  to  this  dreadful  riot."     "  Riot ! —what  riot?  " 

"  My  dear  Eleanor,  the  riot  is  only  in  your  own  brain. 
The  confusion  there  is  scandalous.  Miss  Morland  has  been 
talking  of  nothing  more  dreadful  than  a  new  publication 
which  is  shortly  to  come  out,  in  three  duodecimo  volumes, 
two  hundred  and  seventy-six  pages  in  each,  with  a  frontis- 
piece to  the  first  of  two  tombstones  and  a  lantern  —  do  you 
understand  ?  And  you,  Miss  Morland,  —  my  stupid  sister 
has  mistaken  all  your  clearest  expressions.  You  talked  of 
expected  horrors  in  London ;  and  instead  of  instantly  con- 
ceiving, as  any  rational  creature  would  have  done,  that  such 
words  could  relate  only  to  a  circulating  library,  she  imme- 
diately pictured  to  herself  a  mob  of  three  thousand  men 
assembled  in  St.  George's  fields,  the  Bank  attacked,  the 
Tower  threatened,  the  streets  of  London  flowing  with  blood,  a 
detachment  of  the  Twelfth  Light  Dragoons  (the  hopes  of  the 
nation)  called  up  from  Northampton  to  quell  the  insurgents, 
and  the  gallant  Captain  Frederick  Tilney,  in  the  moment  of 
charging  at  the  head  of  his  troop,  knocked  off  his  horse  by 
a  brick-bat  from  an  upper  window.  Forgive  her  stupidity. 
The  fears  of  the  sister  have  added  to  the  weakness  of  the 
woman ;  but  she  is  by  no  means  a  simpleton  in  general." 

Miss  Tilney  then  insists  that  her  brother  should 
explain  his  persiflage  to  the  innocent  Catherine. 
•'  What  am  I  to  do  ? "  "  You  know  what  you 
ought  to  do.      Clear  your  conduct  handsomely  be- 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  405 

fore  her.     Tell  her  that  you  think  very  highly  of  the 
understanding  of  women." 

"  Miss  Morland,  I  think  very  highly  of  the  understanding 
of  all  the  women  in  the  world,  especially  of  those,  whoever 
they  may  be,  with  whom  I  happen  to  be  in  company." 

"  That  is  not  enough.     Be  more  serious." 

"  Miss  Morland,  no  one  can  think  more  highly  of  the 
understanding  of  women  than  I  do.  In  my  opinion,  nature 
has  given  them  so  much  that  they  never  find  it  necessary  to 
use  more  than  half." 

The  romantic  folly  of  over-sensibility  is  a  favorite 
subject  of  satire  with  Miss  Austen : 

Marianne  would  have  thought  herself  very  inexcusable 
had  she  been  able  to  sleep  at  all  the  first  night  after 
parting  from  Willoughby.  She  would  have  been  ashamed 
to  look  her  family  in  the  face  the  next  morning,  had 
she  not  risen  from  her  bed  in  more  need  of  repose 
than  when  she  lay  down  in  it. 

"Well,  Marianne,"  said  Elinor,  as  soon  as  he  had  left 
them,  "  for  one  morning  I  think  you  have  done  pretty 
well.  You  have  already  ascertained  Mr.  Willoughby's 
opinion  in  almost  every  matter  of  importance.  You  know 
what  he  thinks  of  Cowper  and  Scott ;  you  are  certain  of 
his  estimating  their  beauties  as  he  ought,  and  you  have 
received  every  assurance  of  his  admiring  Pope  no  more 
than  is  proper.  But  how  is  your  acquaintance  to  be  long 
supported  under  such  extraordinary  despatch  of  every 
subject  for  discourse?  You  will  soon  have  exhausted  each 
favorite  topic.  Another  meeting  will  suffice  to  explain 
his  sentiments  on  picturesque  beauty  and  second  mar- 
riages, and  then  you  can  have  nothing  farther  to  ask." 


4o6  Jane  Austen 

And  the  sentiments  of  a  girl  of  seventeen  towards  a 
bachelor  of  thirty-five  are  thus  set  forth : 

She  was  perfectly  disposed  to  make  every  allowance 
for  the  colonel's  advanced  state  of  life  which  humanity 
required. 

It  is  worthy  of  observation,  too,  that  in  all  this  quiet 
satire  she  includes  herself  whenever  she  feels  her  par- 
ticular likings  liable  to  exaggeration.  We  know  that 
Miss  Austen  was  fond  of  Cowper ;  ^  and  she  makes  her 
most  sentimental  heroine  rave  over  that  author,  as 
if  to  hold  within  check  her  own  enthusiasm.  The 
careful  reader  of  *  Northanger  Abbey '  sees  that 
Miss  Austen  is  frankly  an  admirer  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe, 
notwithstanding  her  critical  perception  of  her  absurd- 
ities ;  —  that  she  shares  with  others  who  are  not  blind 
to  the  unrealities  a  live  interest  in  the  excitement  of 
the  plots.  She  is  really  laughing  at  herself,  as  well 
as  at  Catherine,  all  through  the  book.  Like  Theo- 
phrastus,  she  can  say,  "  Dear  blunderers,  I  am  one 
of  you."  And  this  brings  her  back  to  the  human 
touch,  which  sometimes  she  seems  to  avoid  with 
her  superior  aloofness. 

She  is  equally  satirical  at  the  expense  of  the  men, 
as  the  immortal  Mr.  Collins  abundantly  testifies.  Of 
her  baronet  in  '  Persuasion '  she  says : 

He  considered  the  blessing  of  beauty  as  inferior  only  to 
the  blessing  of  a  baronetcy ;  and  the  Sir  Walter  Elliot  who 
united  these  gifts  was  the  constant  object  of  his  warmest 
respect  and  devotion. 

She  readily  finds  a  reason  for  Sir  John  Middleton's 
1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  256. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  407 

enthusiastic  reception  of  the  Dashwoods  to  his  neigh- 
borhood : 

In  settling  a  family  of  females  only  in  his  cottage,  he  had 
all  the  satisfaction  of  a  sportsman  ;  for  a  sportsman,  though 
he  esteems  only  those  of  his  sex  who  are  sportsmen  likewise, 
is  not  often  desirous  of  encouraging  their  taste  by  admitting 
them  to  a  residence  within  his  own  manor. 

When  Wickman  transfers  his  affections  to  a  young 
lady  with  the  superior  attraction  of  ^^^  10,000,  Eliza- 
beth Bennet  writes  to  her  aunt  describing  the  dis- 
appointment of  her  younger  sisters: 

"  Kitty  and  Lydia  take  his  defection  much  more  to  heart 
than  I  do.  They  are  young  in  the  ways  of  the  world,  and 
not  yet  open  to  the  mortifying  conviction  that  handsome 
young  men  must  have  something  to  live  on,  as  well  as  the 
plain." 

In  a  mere  snatch  of  dialogue,  she  sums  up  one  of 
the  principal  charges  against  careless  literary  expres- 
sion: 

"  I  do  not  understand  you." 

"Then  we  are  on  very  unequal  terms,  for  I  understand 
you  perfectly  well." 

"  Me  ?  yes ;  I  cannot  speak  well  enough  to  be  unintel- 
ligible." 

"  Bravo  !  an  excellent  satire  on  modem  language." 

This  Henry  Tilney  would  probably  be  thought  a 
little  patronizing  by  a  latter-day  Catherine;  but 
Miss  Austen  puts  into  his  mouth  much  of  her  own 
satire  on  the  heavy  didacticism  of  her  time: 

"  I  am  come,  young  ladies,  in  a  very  moralizing  strain, 
to  observe  that  our  pleasures  in  this  world  are  always  to  be 


4o8  Jane  Austen 

paid  for,  and  that  we  often  purchase  them  at  a  great  disad- 
vantage, giving  ready-monied  actual  happiness  for  a  draught 
on  the  future  that  may  not  be  honored." 

We  are  constantly  surprised  by  the  neat  little 
"  asides  "  she  drops  as  her  characters  develop  them- 
selves; and  this  without  the  digressions  which  some- 
times arrest  the  interest  of  Thackeray's  pages: 

Everybody  at  all  addicted  to  letter-writing,  without  having 
much  to  say,  which  will  include  a  large  portion  of  the  female 
world  at  least  .  .  . 

She  was  heartily  ashamed  of  her  ignorance  —  a  misplaced 
shame.  Where  people  wish  to  attach,  they  should  always 
be  ignorant.  To  come  with  a  well-informed  mind  is  to 
come  with  an  inability  of  administering  to  the  vanity  of 
others,  which  a  sensible  person  would  always  wish  to  avoid. 
A  woman,  especially,  if  she  have  the  misfortune  of  knowing 
anything,  should  conceal  it  as  well  as  she  can. 

Their  vanity  was  in  such  good  order  that  they  seemed  to 
be  quite  free  from  it,  and  gave  themselves  no  airs ;  while 
the  praises  attending  such  behavior.  .  .  served  to  strengthen 
them  in  believing  they  had  no  faults. 

This  brilliant  characterization  sometimes  clarifies 
into  the  sharpness  of  a  "  saying  ; "  and  it  is  to  Miss 
Austen's  great  credit  that  the  radical  fault  of  the 
Maxim  —  that  a  great  truth  can  seldom  be  folded 
in  such  narrow  limits  without  sacrificing  some  parts 
of  it  —  is  avoided  by  her  discriminating  care,  either 
by  hedging  her  selections  with  a  humorous  perversity, 
as  in  — 

Selfishness  must  always  be  forgiven,  you  know,  because 
there  is  no  hope  of  a  cure. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  409 

When  people  are  determined  on  a  mode  of  conduct 
which  they  know  to  be  wrong,  they  feel  injured  by  the 
expectation  of  anything  better  from  them. 

or  by  limiting  the  application  by  some  saving  verb 
or  adverb,  as  in  — 

A  sanguine  temper,  though  for  ever  expecting  more  good 
than  occurs,  does  not  always  pay  for  its  hopes  by  any  pro- 
portionate depression. 

Goldsmith  tells  us  that,  when  lovely  woman  stoops  to 
folly,  she  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  die ;  and  when  she 
stoops  to  be  disagreeable,  it  is  equally  to  be  recommended 
as  a  clearer  of  ill-fame. 

Wickedness  is  always  wickedness,  but  folly  is  not  always 
folly. 

A  mind  lively  and  at  ease  can  do  with  seeing  nothing, 
and  can  see  nothing  that  does  not  answer. 

One  may  be  continually  abusive  without  saying  anything 
just ;  but  one  cannot  be  always  laughing  at  a  man  without 
now  and  then  stumbling  on  something  witty. 


VIII 

It  is  always  the  humorous  view  with  Miss  Austen, 
whether  it  be  a  neat  crystallized  characterization,  or  a 
chance  laughing  word  dropped  in  passing,  or  a  dry 
retort  to  some  generality.^ 

1  Her  letters  are  full  of  this  humorous  observation.  In  a  letter  to 
her  nephew,  she  says  :  "  We  saw  a  countless  number  of  postchaises 
full  of  boys  pass  by,  yesterday  morning,  full  of  future  heroes,  legis- 
lators, fools,  and  villains."  (Austen-Leigh,  p.  307).  There  are  other 
ways  of  reporting  such  events,  but  it  was  the  "  destiny  which  stands  by 


41  o  Jane  Austen 

"  Younger  sons  cannot  marry  where  they  like." 
**  Unless  where  they  like  women  of  fortune,  which  I  think 
they  very  often  do." 

Herein  is  observed  her  dramatic  power.  To  many 
critical  readers,  the  interest  of  her  story  is  not  so 
great  as  the  interest  in  its  narration,  —  in  her  way  of 
telling  the  story.  It  is  remarkable  how  little  com- 
ment there  is  by  the  author:  the  characters  develop 
themselves  through  the  dialogue,^  Hers  are  not 
novels  of  incident,  yet  they  are  dramatic,  —  a  singu- 
lar distinction.  Not  descriptive,  eschewing  the  theat- 
rical, a  quiet  student  of  character,  she  is  nevertheless 
more  highly  dramatic  than  most,  in  that  she  develops 
all  her  effects  through  the  speech  and  actions  of  her 
characters.  She  combines  the  constructive  abilities 
of  Fielding  —  and  without  his  improbability  of  situa- 
tion—  with  Richardson's  consistency  in  piecing  the 
parts  into  a  harmonious  whole. 

This  dramatic  use  of  the  dialogue  clearly  manifests 
a  thorough  fundamental  knowledge  of  her  characters 
and  a  logical  power  in  developing  their  peculiarities. 
We  know  Miss  Thorpe  sufficiently  well  towards  the 
close  of  the  novel  to  appreciate  the  effectiveness  of 

sarcastic,  with  our  dramatis  persons  folded  in  her  hands,"  which  ap- 
pealed to  her  dramatic  sense. 

1  No  better  entertainment  for  a  cultivated  house  party  could  be  de- 
vised than  the  acting  of  certain  typical  scenes  from  Miss  Austen's 
novels.  This  is  put  within  the  reach  of  the  ambitious  by  Mrs.  Dow- 
son's  little  book,  '  Duologues  and  Scenes  from  the  Novels  of  Jane 
Austen.'  Arranged  and  adapted  for  drawing-room  performance  by 
Rosina  Filippi  [Mrs.  Dowson].  With  illustrations  by  Miss  Fletcher. 
London :  J.  M.  Dent  &  Co.  1895.  N°  scenery  is  necessary  for  the 
representations,  as  our  author  never  depended  upon  that  to  heighten 
her  effect;  and  Miss  Fletcher's  illustrations  give  all  the  necessary 
hints  for  costumes. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  411 

letting  her  seal  her  own  fate  with  us  out  of  her  own 
lips  (for  out  of  our  own  mouths  are  we  condemned). 
She  is  confessing  her  ardent  affection  for  Captain 
Tilney : 

"  He  is  the  only  man  I  ever  did  or  could  love,  and  I 
know  you  will  convince  him  of  it.  The  spring  fashions  are 
partly  down,  and  the  hats  the  most  frightful  you  can 
imagine." 

Miss  Bingley  is  allowed  to  rattle  on,  her  creator  grimly 
standing  by  and  shrugging  her  shoulders  : 

"  My  ideas  flow  so  rapidly  that  I  have  not  time  to  ex- 
press them  —  by  which  means  my  letters  convey  no  ideas 
at  all  to  my  correspondents." 

And  however  vacillating  Mr.  Bingley  may  be,  one  of 
the  indications  that  he  is  not  a  fool  is  his  reply  to  his 
sister's  expressed  desire  to  substitute  conversation  for 
dancing  at  a  ball : 

"  I  should  like  balls  infinitely  better  if  they  were  car- 
ried on  in  a  different  manner.  ...  It  surely  would  be  much 
more  rational  if  conversation  instead  of  dancing  made  the 
order  of  the  day." 

,  "  Much  more  rational,  my  dear  Caroline,  I  dare  say,  but 
it  would  not  be  near  so  much  like  a  ball." 

Mr.  Collins,  proposing  to  Elizabeth  Bennet,  declares 
that  to  fortune  he  is  perfectly  indifferent,  and  that  he 
shall  make  no  demand  of  that  nature  on  her  father, 
*'  since  I  am  well  aware  that  it  would  not  be  complied 
with."  He  is  not  disturbed  by  Elizabeth's  rejection,  but 
when  she  tells  him  that  Lady  Catherine  would  not 
approve  of  her,  that,  he  gravely  confesses,  would  be 


4 1 2  Jane  Austen 

an  objection.  It  is  a  pity  Elizabeth  Bennet  could  not 
have  stepped  into  Dorothea's  place  when  Casaubon 
asked  her  to  marry  him:  it  would  have  prevented 
much  subsequent  trouble. 

"  Her  indifferent  state  of  health  unhappily  prevents  her 
being  in  town ;  and  by  that  means,  as  I  told  Lady  Cath- 
erine myself  one  day,  has  deprived  the  British  court  of  its 
brightest  ornament.  Her  ladyship  seemed  pleased  with  the 
idea ;  and  you  may  imagine  that  I  am  happy  on  every  occa- 
sion to  offer  those  little  delicate  compliments  which  are 
always  acceptable  to  ladies.  I  have  more  than  once  ob- 
served to  Lady  Catherine  that  her  charming  daughter 
seemed  bom  to  be  a  duchess,  and  that  the  most  elevated 
rank,  instead  of  giving  her  consequence,  would  be  adorned 
by  her.  These  are  the  kind  of  little  things  which  please  her 
ladyship  and  it  is  a  sort  of  attention  which  I  consider  my- 
self peculiarly  bound  to  pay." 

"  You  judge  very  properly,"  said  Mr.  Bennet,  "  and  it  is 
happy  for  you  that  you  possess  the  talent  of  flattering  with 
delicacy.  May  I  ask  whether  these  pleasing  attentions 
proceed  from  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  or  are  the  result 
of  previous  study?" 

"They  arise  chiefly  from  what  is  passing  at  the  time, 
and  though  I  sometimes  amuse  myself  with  suggesting  and 
arranging  such  Httle  elegant  compliments  as  may  be  adapted 
to  ordinary  occasions,  I  always  wish  to  give  them  as  unstud- 
ied an  air  as  possible." 

The  elegance  of  Miss  Austen's  disdain,  and  its 
entire  freedom  from  malice;  her  high  ladyhood, 
with  perhaps  a  touch  of  superciliousness,  softened, 
however,  by  humor;  the  clear  look  of  wondering 
contempt  as  she  passes,  and  yet  the  lingering,  amused 
at  herself  for  her  interest  over  some  whimsical  con- 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  4 1 3 

ceit;  sane-eyed  queen  of  serenity,  and  never  harsh, 
even  in  the  rare  instances  where  she  is  indignant;  not 
expecting  overmuch  from  a  self-deceiving  human 
nature,  yet  with  a  feminine  freedom  from  cynicism, 
and  without  the  bitterness  of  a  disappointed  ideaUty 
—  where  else  shall  we  find  a  similar  charm? 

When  Mr.  Collins  could  be  forgotten,  there  was  really  a 
great  air  of  comfort  throughout,  and  by  Charlotte's  evident 
enjoyment  of  it,  Elizabeth  supposed  he  must  be  often 
forgotten. 

Elizabeth,  referring  to  Bingley's  inattention  to  others 
in  his  devotion  to  Jane,  asks :  "  Is  not  general  inciv- 
ility the  very  essence  of  love?  " 


IX 

We  are  prepared  for  the  full  development  of 
Mrs.  Norris's  character  by  the  little  sarcasms  casually 
dropped  in  the  early  part  of  the  story : 

.  .  .  consoled  herself  for  the  loss  of  her  husband  by  con- 
sidering that  she  could  do  very  vpell  without  him ;  and  for 
her  reduction  of  income  by  the  evident  necessity  of  stricter 
economy. 

.  .  .  and  no  other  attempt  made  at  secrecy  than  Mrs. 
Norris's  talking  of  it  everywhere  as  a  matter  not  to  be 
talked  of  at  present. 

And  there  is  not  a  discordant  note  in  the  harmony  of 
that  lady's  conduct  throughout  the  book,  all  discor- 
dant, all  out  of  harmony  as  that  life  is.  It  is  a  very 
great  gift  to  be  able  to  draw  such  a  character  without 
repelling  the  reader.     Mrs.  Norris  is,  in  fact,  a  repul- 


414  J^"^  Austen 

sive  creature.  None  of  us  would  willingly  live  in  the 
same  house  with  her  for  twenty-four  hours.  Yet  so 
great  is  the  humor  with  which  her  selfishness  is  por- 
trayed, and  so  logical  is  the  sequence  of  her  develop- 
ment, that  the  very  repulse  becomes  an  impulse,  and 
we  confess  ourselves  eager  for  her  reappearance  when- 
ever she  is  absent  from  the  stage.  We  don't  feel  that 
way  about  Mrs.  Reed  or  Mr.  Brocklehurst.  I  was 
reading  'Mansfield  Park'  aloud,  the  other  evening, 
when  one  of  the  listeners,  impatient  at  the  description 
of  the  scenes  at  Portsmouth,  cried  out:  "Skip  all 
that,  and  give  us  some  more  of  Mrs.  Norris."  Yet 
that  young  man  would  have  been  among  the  first 
to  have  fled  from  Mrs.  Norris  in  the  flesh.  Mighty 
is  humor! 

The  bores  in  Miss  Austen's  novels  are  all  purposely 
so;  which  is  the  precise  opposite  of  most  bores  in 
fiction.  Miss  Burney  did  not  intend  to  make  Sir 
Clement  Willoughby  a  bore,  yet  he  is  a  most  intoler- 
able specimen  of  that  variety.  In  the  notable  article 
on  our  author  by  Archbishop  Whately  above  referred 
to,  Miss  Austen  is  compared  with  Shakspere  in  her 
discriminating  skill  in  drawing  fools, — 

"a  merit  which  is  far  from  common.  To  invent,  indeed,  a 
conversation  full  of  wisdom,  or  of  wit,  requires  that  the 
writer  should  himself  possess  ability ;  but  the  converse  does 
not  hold  good  :  it  is  no  fool  that  can  describe  fools  well,  and 
many  who  have  succeeded  pretty  well  in  painting  superior 
characters  have  failed  in  giving  individuality  to  those 
weaker  ones  which  it  is  necessary  to  introduce  in  order  to 
give  a  faithful  representation  of  real  life  :  they  exhibit  to  us 
mere  folly  in  the  abstract,  forgetting  that  to  the  eye  of  a 
skilful  naturalist  the  insects  on  a  leaf  present  as  wide  dif- 
ferences as  exist  between  the  elephant  and  the  lion." 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  415 

To  the  complaint  that  her  fools  are  too  much  like 
nature,  he  replies: 

"  Such  critics  must  find  *  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor ' 
and  *  Twelfth  Night '  very  tiresome ;  and  those  who  look 
with  pleasure  at  Wilkie's  pictures,  or  those  of  the  Dutch 
school,  must  admit  that  excellence  of  imitation  may  confer 
attraction  on  that  which  would  be  insipid  or  disagreeable  in 
the  reality." 

"  I  love  the  things  which  make  me  gay,"  said  Miss 
Mitford,  "  therefore,  amongst  other  things,  I  love  Miss 
Austen."  "  Dear  books,"  says  Mrs.  Ritchie,  "  dear 
books,  bright,  sparkling  with  wit  and  animation,  in 
which  the  homely  heroines  charm,  the  dull  hours  fly, 
and  the  very  bores  are  enchanting." 

It  is  partly  in  this  supremely  logical  charm  of  Miss 
Austen  that  we  find  the  completeness  of  her  art.  We 
are  constantly  delighted  by  each  new  situation,  not 
because  it  hints  at  a  new  trait,  but  because  it  develops 
the  trait  already  manifested,  and  in  accordance  with 
itself.  It  is  not  the  charm  of  discovery,  not  the  de- 
Hghtfulness  of  surprise,  which  enthralls  us,  but  the 
recognition  of  consistency  in  character-drawing  even 
where  there  is  surprise.  Each  character  is  at  unity 
with  itself.  Mr.  Bennet,  for  example,  cannot  be 
shaken  from  his  ironical  habit  of  looking  at  things 
by  the  disgrace  which  has  overtaken  his  family. 
He  is  excessively  distressed,  of  course,  and  hurries 
to  London  to  try  to  discover  the  wayward  daughter. 
Upon  his  return,  he  blames  himself  for  the  affair, 
and  when  Elizabeth  tells  him  he  must  not  be  too 
severe  upon  himself,  he  says: 

"  You  may  well  warn  me  against  such  an  evil.  Human 
nature  is  so  prone  to  fall  into  it !     No,  Lizzy,  let  me  once 


41 6  Jane  Austen 

in  my  life  feel  how  much  I  have  been  to  blame.  I  am  not 
afraid  of  being  overpowered  by  the  impression.  It  will  pass 
away  soon  enough," 

"  Do  you  suppose  them  to  be  in  London?" 

"  Yes ;  where  else  can  they  be  so  well  concealed  ?  " 

"  And  Lydia  used  to  want  to  go  to  London,"  added  Kitty. 

"She  is  happy,  then,"  said  her  father,  dryly;  "and  her 
residence  there  will  probably  be  of  some  duration." 

Then,  after  a  short  silence,  he  continued,  "  Lizzy,  I  bear 
you  no  ill-will  for  being  justified  in  your  advice  to  me  last 
May,  which,  considering  the  event,  shows  some  greatness 
of  mind." 

They  were  interrupted  by  Miss  Bennet,  who  came  to  fetch 
her  mother's  tea. 

"  This  is  a  parade,"  he  cried,  "  which  does  one  good ;  it 
gives  such  an  elegance  to  misfortune  !  Another  day  I  will 
do  the  same ;  I  will  sit  in  my  library,  in  my  night-cap  and 
powdering  gown,  and  give  as  much  trouble  as  I  can,  —  or 
perhaps  I  may  defer  it  till  Kitty  runs  away." 

"  I  am  not  going  to  run  away,  papa,"  said  Kitty,  fretfully ; 
"  if  /  should  ever  go  to  Brighton,  I  would  behave  better 
than  Lydia." 

"  You  go  to  Brighton  !  I  would  not  trust  you  so  near 
as  East  Bourne  for  fifty  pounds  !  No,  Kitty,  I  have  at 
least  learnt  to  be  cautious,  and  you  will  feel  the  effects  of  it. 
No  officer  is  ever  to  enter  my  house  again,  nor  even  to  pass 
through  the  village.  Balls  will  be  absolutely  prohibited, 
unless  you  stand  up  with  one  of  your  sisters.  And  you  are 
never  to  stir  out  of  doors,  till  you  can  prove  that  you  have 
spent  ten  minutes  of  every  day  in  a  rational  manner." 

Kitty,  who  took  all  these  threats  in  a  serious  light,  began 
to  cry. 

"  Well,  well,"  said  he,  "  do  not  make  yourself  unhappy. 
If  you  are  a  good  girl  for  the  next  ten  years,  I  will  take  you 
to  a  review  at  the  end  of  them." 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  417 

Mr.  Collins  concludes  a  delightfully  Collinsy  letter 
to  Mr.  Bennet  anent  this  misfortune  in  this  wise : 

"  Let  me  advise  you,  then,  my  dear  sir,  to  console  your- 
self as  much  as  possible,  to  throw  off  your  unworthy  child 
from  your  affection  forever,  and  leave  her  to  reap  the 
fruits   of  her   own  heinous   offence." 

After  Lydia's  marriage,  there  is  another  letter  from 
this  exemplary  parson,  in  which  he  says  : 

"  I  am  truly  rejoiced  that  my  cousin  Lydia's  sad  business 
has  been  so  well  hushed  up,  and  am  only  concerned  that 
their  living  together  before  the  marriage  took  place  should 
be  so  generally  known.  I  must  not,  however,  neglect  the 
duties  of  my  station,  or  refrain  from  declaring  my  amazement 
at  hearing  that  you  received  the  young  couple  into  your 
house  as  soon  as  they  were  married.  It  was  an  encourage- 
ment of  vice ;  and  had  I  been  the  rector  of  Longbourn,  I 
should  very  strenuously  have  opposed  it.  You  ought  cer- 
tainly to  forgive  them  as  a  Christian,  but  never  to  admit 
them  in  your  sight,  or  allow  their  names  to  be  mentioned  in 
your  hearing." 

And  this  same  letter  cautions  Mr.  Bennet  against 
his  acceptance  of  Mr.  Darcy's  proposal  for  the  hand 
of  Elizabeth,  because  of  the  disapproval  of  Lady 
Catherine  de  Bourgh ;  which  causes  Mr.  Bennet  to 
declare : 

"  Much  as  I  abominate  writing,  I  would  not  give  up  Mr. 
CoUins's  correspondence  for  any  consideration.  Nay,  when 
I  read  a  letter  of  his,  I  cannot  help  giving  him  the  prefer- 
ence even  over  Wickham,  much  as  I  value  the  impudence 
and  hypocrisy  of  my  son-in-law." 

Later  he  writes  Mr.  Collins: 
27 


4 1 8  Jane  Austen 

"I  must  trouble  you  once  more  for  congratulations. 
Elizabeth  will  soon  be  the  wife  of  Mr.  Darcy.  Console 
Lady  Catherine  as  well  as  you  can.  But  if  I  were  you,  I 
would  stand  by  the  nephew.     He  has  more  to  give." 

Finally,  this  incorrigible  gentleman,  having  in  quick 
succession  seen  three  of  his  daughters  disposed  of, 
says,  in  dismissing  the  third  from  his  library: 

"  If  any  young  men  come  for  Mary  or  Kitty,  send  them 
in,  for  I  am  quite  at  leisure." 

And  Mrs.  Bennet !  It  will  be  remembered  that  she 
wished  to  go  to  Brighton  with  all  the  family,  and  she 
now  insists  that  if  that  plan  had  been  carried  out 
the  disaster  would  not  have  occurred : 

"  And  now  here  's  Mr.  Bennet  gone  away,  and  I  know 
he  will  fight  Wickham  wherever  he  meets  him,  and  then  he 
will  be  killed,  and  what  is  to  become  of  us  all  ?  The  Col- 
linses will  turn  us  out  before  he  is  cold  in  his  grave  ;  and 
if  you  are  not  kind  to  us,  brother,  I  do  not  know  what  we 
shall  do." 

Mr.  Gardiner  calming  her  with  the  assurance  that 
he  will  assist  in  the  search  for  Lydia,  she  immedi- 
ately jumps  to  the  conclusion  that  he  will  find  her, 
and  that  the  marriage  will  follow: 

"  And  as  for  wedding  clothes,  do  not  let  them  wait  for 
that,  but  tell  Lydia  she  shall  have  as  much  money  as  she 
chooses  to  buy  them  after  they  are  married.  .  .  .  And  tell 
my  dear  Lydia  not  to  give  any  directions  about  her  clothes 
till  she  has  seen  me,  for  she  does  not  know  which  are  the 
best  warehouses.  Oh,  brother,  how  kind  you  are  !  I  know 
you  will  contrive  it  all." 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  419 

Notwithstanding  her  dread  that  Mr.  Bennet  will  be 
killed  in  the  duel  which  her  fears  have  conjured  up, 
she  cries  out,  on  hearing  of  his  return  without  Lydia: 

"What!  is  he  coming  home,  and  without  poor  Lydia? 
.  .  .  Sure  he  will  not  leave  London  before  he  has  found 
them.  Who  is  to  fight  Wickham,  and  make  him  marry 
her,  if  he  comes  away?" 

The  girl  having  been  at  last  discovered  and  the 
letter  received  announcing  that  the  marriage  would 
probably  soon  take  place,  — 

Mrs.  Bennet  could  hardly  contain  herself.  As  soon  as 
Jane  had  read  Mr.  Gardiner's  hope  of  Lydia's  being  soon 
married,  her  joy  burst  forth,  and  every  following  sentence 
added  to  its  exuberance.  She  was  now  in  an  irritation  as 
violent  from  delight  as  she  had  ever  been  fidgety  from 
alarm  and  vexation.  To  know  that  her  daughter  would 
be  married  was  enough.  She  was  disturbed  by  no  fear 
for  her  felicity,  nor  humbled  by  any  remembrance  of  her 
misconduct. 

"  My  dear,  dear  Lydia !  "  she  cried :  **  this  is  delight- 
ful indeed !  She  will  be  married !  I  shall  see  her 
again  !  She  will  be  married  at  sixteen  !  My  good,  kind 
brother !  I  knew  how  it  would  be  —  I  knew  he  would 
manage  everything.  How  I  long  to  see  her  !  and  to  see 
dear  Wickham  too  !  But  the  clothes,  the  wedding  clothes  ! 
I  will  write  to  my  sister  Gardiner  about  them  directly. 
Lizzy,  my  dear,  run  down  to  your  father,  and  ask  him  how 
much  he  will  give  her.  Stay,  stay,  I  will  go  myself.  Ring 
the  bell,  Kitty,  for  Hill.  I  will  put  on  my  things  in  a 
moment.  My  dear,  dear  Lydia  !  How  merry  we  shall  be 
together  when  we  meet !  " 

Her  eldest  daughter  endeavored  to  give  some  relief  to  the 
violence  of  these  transports  by  leading  her  thoughts  to  the 


420  Jane  Austen 

obligations  which  Mr.  Gardiner's  behavior  laid  them  all 
under, 

"  For  we  must  attribute  this  happy  conclusion,"  she 
added,  "  in  a  great  measure  to  his  kindness.  We  are  per- 
suaded that  he  has  pledged  himself  to  assist  Mr.  Wickham 
with  money." 

"  Well,"  cried  her  mother,  "  it  is  all  very  right ;  who  should 
do  it  but  her  own  uncle  ?  If  he  had  not  had  a  family  of  his 
own,  I  and  my  children  must  have  had  all  his  money,  you 
know ;  and  it  is  the  very  first  time  we  have  ever  had  any- 
thing from  him  except  a  few  presents.  Well !  I  am  so 
happy.  In  a  short  time  I  shall  have  a  daughter  married. 
Mrs.  Wickham  !  How  well  it  sounds  !  And  she  was  only 
sixteen  last  June.  My  dear  Jane,  I  am  in  such  a  flutter, 
that  I  am  sure  I  can't  write ;  so  I  will  dictate  and  you 
write  for  me.  We  will  settle  with  your  father  about  the 
money  afterwards;  but  the  things  should  be  ordered 
immediately." 

She  was  then  proceeding  to  all  the  particulars  of  calico, 
muslin,  and  cambric,  and  would  soon  have  dictated  some 
very  plentiful  orders,  had  not  Jane,  though  with  some  dif- 
ficulty, persuaded  her  to  wait  till  her  father  was  at  leisure 
to  be  consulted.  One  day's  delay,  she  observed,  would  be 
of  small  importance ;  and  her  mother  was  too  happy  to  be 
quite  so  obstinate  as  usual.  Other  schemes,  too,  came 
into  her  head. 

"  I  will  go  to  Meryton,"  said  she,  "  as  soon  as  I  am 
dressed,  and  tell  the  good,  good  news  to  my  sister  Philips. 
And  as  I  come  back  I  can  call  on  Lady  Lucas  and  Mrs. 
Long.  Kitty,  run  down  and  order  the  carriage.  An  airing 
would  do  me  a  great  deal  of  good,  I  am  sure.  Girls,  can  I 
do  anything  for  you  in  Meryton?  Oh  !  here  comes  Hill. 
My  dear  Hill,  have  you  heard  the  good  news?  Miss  Lydia 
is  going  to  be  married ;  and  you  shall  all  have  a  bowl  of 
punch  to  make  merry  at  her  wedding." 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  421 

It  was  a  fortnight  since  Mrs.  Bennet  had  been  down- 
stairs, but  on  this  happy  day  she  again  took  her  seat  at  the 
head  of  her  table,  and  in  spirits  oppressively  high.  No 
sentiment  of  shame  gave  a  damp  to  her  triumph.  The 
marriage  of  a  daughter,  which  had  been  the  first  object  of 
her  wishes  since  Jane  was  sixteen,  was  now  on  the  point  of 
accomplishment,  and  her  thoughts  and  her  words  ran 
wholly  on  those  attendants  of  elegant  nuptials,  fine  muslins, 
new  carriages,  and  servants.  She  was  busily  searching 
through  the  neighborhood  for  a  proper  situation  for  her 
daughter ;  and  without  knowing  or  considering  what  their 
income  might  be,  rejected  many  as  deficient  in  size  and 
importance. 

"  Hyde  Park  might  do,"  said  she,  "  if  the  Gouldings 
would  quit  it,  or  the  great  house  at  Stoke,  if  the  drawing- 
room  were  larger ;  but  Ashworth  is  too  far  off.  I  could  not 
bear  to  have  her  ten  miles  from  me;  and  as  for  Purvis 
Lodge,  the  attics  are  dreadful." 

Her  husband  allowed  her  to  talk  on  without  interruption 
while  the  servants  remained.  But  when  they  had  with- 
drawn, he  said  to  her,  "  Mrs.  Bennet,  before  you  take  any, 
or  all  of  these  houses,  for  your  son  and  daughter,  let  us 
come  to  a  right  understanding.  Into  one  house  in  this 
neighborhood  they  shall  never  have  admittance.  I  will  not 
encourage  the  imprudence  of  either  by  receiving  them  at 
Longbourn." 

A  long  dispute  followed  this  declaration  ;  but  Mr.  Bennet 
was  firm  :  it  soon  led  to  another ;  and  Mrs.  Bennet  found, 
to  her  amazement  and  horror,  that  her  husband  would  not 
advance  a  guinea  to  buy  clothes  for  his  daughter.  He 
protested  that  she  should  receive  from  him  no  mark  of  affec- 
tion whatever  on  the  occasion.  Mrs.  Bennet  could  hardly 
comprehend  it.  That  his  anger  could  be  carried  to  such  a 
point  of  inconceivable  resentment  as  to  refuse  his  daughter 
a  privilege   without   which   her   marriage   would   scarcely 


422  J^ne  Austen 

seem  valid,  exceeded  all  that  she  could  believe  possible. 
She  was  more  alive  to  the  disgrace  which  her  want  of  new 
clothes  must  reflect  on  her  daughter's  nuptials  than  to  any 
sense  of  shame  at  her  eloping  and  living  with  Wickhara 
a  fortnight  before  they  took  place. 

Mrs.  Bennet  declares  that  she  hates  the  very  sight 
of  Mr.  Darcy,  but  when  Elizabeth  makes  known  her 
engagement,  — 

Its  effect  was  most  extraordinary;  for,  on  first  hearing 
it  Mrs.  Bennet  sat  quite  still,  and  unable  to  utter  a 
syllable.  Nor  was  it  under  many,  many  minutes,  that  she 
could  comprehend  what  she  heard,  though  not  in  general 
backward  to  credit  what  was  for  the  advantage  of  her 
family,  or  that  came  in  the  shape  of  a  lover  to  any  of  them. 
She  began  at  length  to  recover,  to  fidget  about  in  her  chair, 
get  up,  sit  down  again,  wonder,  and  bless  herself. 

"  Good  gracious  1  Lord  bless  me  1  only  think  !  dear  me  ! 
Mr.  Darcy  !  who  would  have  thought  it  ?  And  is  it  really 
true  ?  Oh,  my  sweetest  Lizzy !  how  rich  and  how  great 
you  will  be  !  What  pin-money,  what  jewels,  what  carriages 
you  will  have  !  Jane's  is  nothing  to  it  —  nothing  at  all. 
I  am  so  pleased  —  so  happy.  Such  a  charming  man  !  so 
handsome,  so  tall !  Oh,  my  dear  Lizzy  !  A  house  in  town  ! 
Everything  that  is  charming !  Three  daughters  married  ! 
Ten  thousand  a  year !  Oh,  Lord  !  what  will  become  of 
me?     I  shall  go  distracted." 

Mr.  Woodhouse  is  incapable  of  penetrating  the 
somewhat  deceptive  character  of  Frank  Churchill, 
but  thinks  that  young  man  "  is  not  quite  the  thing  " 
—  why?  "He  has  been  opening  the  doors  very 
often  this  evening,  and  keeping  them  open  very 
inconsiderately.  He  does  not  think  of  the  draught. 
I  do  not  mean  to  set  you  against  him,  but  indeed,  he 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  423 

is  not  quite  the  thing."  Every  view  of  Mr.  Wood- 
house  is  from  the  standpoint  of  the  valetudinarian, 
and  all  moral  judgments  are  filtered  through  the 
mists  of  his  delicate  health.  When  Emma  exhibits 
her  portrait  of  Miss  Smith  for  the  approval  of  the 
family,  her  father's  only  criticism  is  that  the  subject 
of  the  sketch  "seems  to  be  sitting  out  of  doors,  with 
only  a  little  shawl  over  her  shoulders;  and  it  makes 
one  think  she  must  catch  cold." 

"  But,  my  dear  papa,  it  is  supposed  to  be  summer,  a  warm 
day  in  the  summer.     Look  at  the  trees." 

"  But  it  is  never  safe  to  sit  out  of  doors,  my  dear." 

When  Emma  consents  to  marry  Knightley,  every 
reader  asks  himself  how  can  Mr.  Woodhouse's 
approval  be  gained?  and,  as  expected,  he  is  "so 
miserable  "  when  the  subject  is  proposed  to  him  that 
the  couple  are  "  almost  hopeless."  But  with  her 
usual  comic  gift  and  logical  consistency,  Miss  Austen 
turns  this  same  habitual  nervousness  into  the  reason 
for  his  final  acquiescence : 

In  this  state  of  suspense  they  were  befriended,  not  by 
any  sudden  illumination  of  Mr.  Woodhouse's  mind,  or  any 
wonderful  change  of  his  nervous  system,  but  by  the  opera- 
tion of  the  same  system  in  another  way.  Mrs.  Weston's 
poultry  house  was  robbed  one  night  of  all  her  turkeys,  — 
evidently  by  the  ingenuity  of  man.  Other  poultry  yards  in 
the  neighborhood  also  suffered.  Pilfering  was  house-break- 
ing to  Mr.  Woodhouse's  fears.  He  was  very  uneasy ;  and 
but  for  the  sense  of  his  son-in  law's  protection  would  have 
been  under  wretched  alarm  every  night  of  his  life.  The 
strength,  resolution,  and  presence  of  mind  of  the  Mr.  Knight- 
leys  commanded  his  fullest  dependence.     While  either  of 


424  Jane  Austen 

them  protected  him  and  his,  Hartfield  was  safe.  But  Mr. 
John  Knightley  must  be  in  London  again  by  the  end  of  the 
first  week  in  November. 

The  result  of  this  distress  was,  that  with  a  much  more 
voluntary  cheerful  consent  than  his  daughter  had  ever 
presumed  to  hope  for  at  the  moment,  she  was  able  to 
fix  her  wedding-day  ;  and  Mr.  Elton  was  called  on,  within 
a  month  from  the  marriage  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Mar- 
tin, to  join  the  hands  of  Mr.  Knightley  and  Miss  Wood- 
house. 

It  is  in  castastrophe  that  character  shines.  We  do 
not  realize  the  nature  of  asbestos  until  the  fire  attacks 
it.  The  temptation  of  the  novelist  to  bring  out  some 
hitherto  unsuspected  quality  in  some  sharp  moment 
of  peril  or  disaster  is  not  often  enough  resisted,  with  the 
result  of  a  lack  of  agreement  between  the  climax  and 
what  has  led  up  to  it.  Miss  Austen's  logic  is  too  sure  to 
permit  her  ever  making  that  mistake.  Each  of  her 
characters  is  true  to  itself  always ;  and  when  such 
truthfulness  illustrates  inconsequence,  and  such  conse- 
quence illumines  self-deceit,  the  end  gained  is  as 
amusing  to  behold  as  it  is  difficult  to  accomplish. 
Satire  has  to  do  with  foolish  people.  Now,  foolish 
people  are  never  logical  in  any  broad  sense,  yet  fre- 
quently logical  in  a  narrow  sense.  For  example, 
when  Sir  John  Middleton  is  made  acquainted  with 
Willoughby's  baseness,  his  censure  does  not  find  an 
outlet  in  moral  indignation,  but  in  a  mere  disappoint- 
ment that  "  so  bold  a  rider  "  could  act  thus,  "  It  was 
only  the  last  time  they  met  that  he  had  offered  him 
one  of  Folly's  puppies.  And  this  was  the  end  of  it !  " 
The  habitually  light  cannot  be  roused  by  tremendous 
events  from  their  levity,  and  great  events  have  the 
same  narrow  judgments  as  small  events. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  425 

Mrs.  Palmer,  in  her  way,  was  equally  angry.  She  was 
determined  to  drop  his  acquaintance  immediately,  and  she 
was  very  thankful  that  she  had  never  been  acquainted  with 
him  at  all.  She  wished  with  all  her  heart  Combe  Magna 
was  not  so  near  Cleveland ;  but  it  did  not  signify,  for  it  was 
a  great  deal  too  far  off  to  visit ;  she  hated  him  so  much 
that  she  was  resolved  never  to  mention  his  name  again, 
and  she  should  tell  everybody  she  saw  how  good-for-nothing 
he  was. 

"  He  that  is  unjust,  let  him  be  unjust  still ;  and  he 
which  is  filthy,  let  him  be  filthy  still ;  and  he  that  is 
righteous  let  him  be  righteous  still ;  and  he  that  is 
holy  let  him  be  holy  still."  And  this  by  a  girl  not 
yet  in  her  majority ! 


X 

No  one  knew  better  the  winding  self-deceits  of  the 
human  heart.  Her  lack  of  the  broadest  sympathies 
concentrated  her  gaze  all  the  more  keenly  at  the  par- 
ticular weakness.  She  was  a  great  diagnostician.  She 
does  not  hate,  although  she  scorns.  She  is  therefore 
not  distracted  by  an  indignation  which  distorts  the 
vision  into  seeing  faults  which  do  not  exist;  and  if 
she  magnifies  the  faults,  it  is  in  the  same  way  that  the 
naturalist  magnifies  the  insect  under  his  glass.  She 
never  blackens  a  character,  no  matter  how  black  the 
character  may  be.  She  knows  it  is  not  necessary  to 
make  John  Dashwood  brutal  or  insolent  to  his  sister 
and  her  family.  "  His  manners  to  them,  though  calm, 
were  perfectly  kind."  Yet  he  forces  them,  through 
his  cruel  selfishness,  to  the  point  of  destitution,  de- 
ceiving himself  all  the  while  with  such  specious  ex- 


426  J^riG  Austen 

cuses  that  he  would  have  thought  a  grave  injustice 
done  him  had  he  been  called  to  account. 

Mr.  John  Dashwood  had  not  the  strong  feelings  of  the 
rest  of  the  family ;  but  he  was  affected  by  the  recommenda- 
tion of  such  a  nature  at  such  a  time,  and  he  promised 
to  do  everything  in  his  power  to  make  them  comfortable. 
His  father  was  rendered  easy  by  such  an  assurance,  and 
Mr.  John  Dashwood  had  then  leisure  to  consider  how  much 
there  might  prudently  be  in  his  power  to  do  for  them. 

He  was  not  an  ill-disposed  young  man,  unless  to  be 
rather  cold-hearted  and  rather  selfish  is  to  be  ill-disposed ; 
but  he  was  in  general  well-respected,  for  he  conducted 
himself  with  propriety  in  the  discharge  of  his  ordinary  duties. 
Had  he  married  a  more  amiable  woman,  he  might  have 
been  made  still  more  respectable  than  he  was ;  he  might 
even  have  been  made  amiable  himself,  for  he  was  very 
young  when  he  married  and  very  fond  of  his  wife.  But 
Mrs.  John  Dashwood  was  a  strong  caricature  of  himself; 
more  narrow-minded  and  selfish. 

When  he  gave  his  promise  to  his  father,  he  meditated 
within  himself  to  increase  the  fortunes  of  his  sisters  by  the 
present  of  a  thousand  pounds  apiece.  He  then  really 
thought  himself  equal  to  it.  The  prospect  of  four  thousand 
a  year,  in  addition  to  his  present  income,  besides  the  re- 
maining half  of  his  own  mother's  fortune,  warmed  his  heart 
and  made  him  feel  capable  of  generosity.  "  Yes,  he  would 
give  them  three  thousand  pounds ;  it  would  be  liberal  and 
handsome  !  It  would  be  enough  to  make  them  completely 
easy.  Three  thousand  pounds  !  he  could  spare  so  consid- 
erable a  sum  with  little  inconvenience."  He  thought  of  it 
all  day  long  and  for  many  days  successively,  and  he  did  not 
repent.  .  .  . 

Mrs.  John  Dashwood  did  not  at  all  approve  of  what  her 
husband  intended  to  do  for  his  sisters.  To  take  three 
thousand  pounds  from  the  fortune  of  their  dear  little  boy 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  427 

would  be  impoverishing  him  to  the  most  dreadful  degree. 
She  begged  him  to  think  again  on  the  subject.  How  could 
he  answer  to  himself  to  rob  his  child,  and  his  only  child, 
too,  of  so  large  a  sum  ?  And  what  possible  claim  could  the 
Miss  Dashwoods,  who  were  related  to  him  only  by  half 
blood,  which  she  considered  as  no  relationship  at  all,  have 
on  his  generosity  to  so  large  an  amount  ?  It  was  very  well 
known  that  no  affection  was  ever  supposed  to  exist  between 
the  children  of  any  man  by  different  marriages ;  and  why 
was  he  to  ruin  himself,  and  their  poor  little  Harry,  by  giving 
away  all  his  money  to  his  half-sisters? 

"  It  was  my  father's  last  request  to  me,"  replied  her  hus- 
band, "  that  I  should  assist  his  widow  and  daughters." 

"  He  did  not  know  what  he  was  talking  of,  I  daresay ; 
ten  to  one  but  he  was  light-headed  at  the  time.  Had  he 
been  in  his  right  senses  he  could  not  have  thought  of  such 
a  thing  as  begging  you  to  give  away  half  your  fortune  from 
your  own  child." 

"  He  did  not  stipulate  for  any  particular  sum,  my  dear 
Fanny ;  he  only  requested  me,  in  general  terms,  to  assist 
them,  and  to  make  their  situation  more  comfortable  than  it 
was  in  his  power  to  do.  Perhaps  it  would  have  been  as 
well  if  he  had  left  it  wholly  to  myself.  He  could  hardly 
suppose  I  should  neglect  them.  But  as  he  required  the 
promise,  I  could  not  do  less  than  give  it,  —  at  least,  I  thought 
so  at  the  time.  The  promise  therefore  was  given,  and  must 
be  performed.     Something  must  be  done  for  them  —  " 

"  Well  then  let  something  be  done  for  them ;  but  that 
something  need  not  be  three  thousand  pounds.  Consider," 
she  added,  "  that  when  the  money  is  once  parted  with,  it 
never  can  return.  Your  sisters  will  marry,  and  it  will  be 
gone  for  ever.  If,  indeed,  it  could  ever  be  restored  to  our 
poor  little  boy  —  " 

**  Why,  to  be  sure,"  said  her  husband,  very  gravely, "  that 
would   make  a  great   difference.     "  The  time   may  come 


428  Jane  Austen 

when  Harry  will  regret  that  so  large  a  sum  was  parted  with. 
If  he  should  have  a  numerous  family,  for  instance,  it  would 
be  a  very  convenient  addition." 

"  To  be  sure  it  would." 

"  Perhaps,  then,  it  would  be  better  for  all  parties  if  the 
sum  were  diminished  one-half.  Five  hundred  pounds  would 
be  a  prodigious  increase  to  their  fortunes  ! " 

"  Oh  !  beyond  anything  great !  What  brother  on  earth 
would  do  half  as  much  for  his  sisters,  even  if  really  his  sisters  ! 
And  as  it  is  —  only  half-blood  !  But  you  have  such  a  gen- 
erous spirit ! " 

"  I  would  not  wish  to  do  anything  mean,"  he  replied. 
"  One  had  rather,  on  such  occasions,  do  too  much  than  too 
little.  No  one,  at  least,  can  think  I  have  not  done  enough 
for  them  :  even  themselves,  they  can  hardly  expect  more." 

"  There  is  no  knowing  what  they  may  expect,"  said  the 
lady ;  "  but  we  are  not  to  think  of  their  expectations  :  the 
question  is,  what  you  can  afford  to  do." 

"  Certainly ;  and  I  think  I  may  afford  to  give  them  five 
hundred  pounds  apiece.  As  it  is,  without  any  addition  of 
mine,  they  will  each  have  three  thousand  pounds  on  their 
mother's  death  —  a  very  comfortable  income  for  any  young 
woman." 

*'  To  be  sure  it  is ;  and  indeed,  it  strikes  me  that  they 
can  want  no  addition  at  all.  They  will  have  ten  thousand 
pounds  divided  amongst  them.  If  they  marry,  they  will  be 
sure  of  doing  well,  and  if  they  do  not,  they  may  all  live 
very  comfortably  together  on  the  interest  of  ten  thousand 
pounds." 

"  That  is  very  true,  and  therefore  I  do  not  know  whether 
upon  the  whole  it  would  not  be  more  advisable  to  do  some- 
thing for  their  mother  while  she  lives,  rather  than  for  them 
—  something  of  the  annuity  kind,  I  mean.  My  sisters 
would  feel  the  good  effects  of  it  as  well  as  herself.  A  hun- 
dred a  year  would  make  them  all  perfectly  comfortable." 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  429 

His  wife  hesitated  a  little,  however,  in  giving  her  con- 
sent to  this  plan. 

"  To  be  sure,"  said  she,  "  it  is  better  than  parting  with 
fifteen  hundred  pounds  at  once.  But  then,  if  Mrs.  Dash- 
wood  should  live  fifteen  years,  we  shall  be  completely 
taken  in." 

"  Fifteen  years  !  my  dear  Fanny,  her  life  cannot  be  worth 
half  that  purchase." 

"  Certainly  not ;  but  if  you  observe,  people  always  live 
for  ever  when  there  is  any  annuity  to  be  paid  them ;  and 
she  is  very  stout  and  healthy,  and  hardly  forty.  An  annuity 
is  a  very  serious  business ;  it  comes  over  and  over  every 
year,  and  there  is  no  getting  rid  of  it.  You  are  not  aware 
of  what  you  are  doing.  I  have  known  a  great  deal  of  the 
trouble  of  annuities ;  for  my  mother  was  clogged  with  the 
payment  of  three  to  old  superannuated  servants  by  my 
father's  will,  and  it  is  amazing  how  disagreeable  she  found  it. 
Twice  every  year  these  annuities  were  to  be  paid ;  and 
then  there  was  the  trouble  of  getting  it  to  them  ;  and  then 
one  of  them  was  said  to  have  died,  and  afterwards  it  turned 
out  to  be  no  such  thing.  My  mother  was  quite  sick  of  it. 
Her  income  was  not  her  own,  she  said,  with  such  perpetual 
claims  on  it;  and  it  was  the  more  unkind  in  my  father 
because,  otherwise,  the  money  would  have  been  entirely  at  my 
mother's  disposal  without  any  restriction  whatever.  It  has 
given  me  such  an  abhorrence  of  annuities,  that  I  am  sure  I 
would  not  pin  myself  down  to  the  payment  of  one  for  all  the 
world." 

"  It  is  certainly  an  unpleasant  thing,"  replied  Mr.  Dash- 
wood,  "  to  have  those  kind  of  yearly  drains  on  one's  income. 
One's  fortune,  as  your  mother  justly  says,  is  not  one's  own. 
To  be  tied  down  to  the  regular  payment  of  such  a  sum,  on 
every  rent  day,  is  by  no  means  desirable ;  it  takes  away  one's 
independence." 

"  Undoubtedly ;  and  after  all,  you  have  no  thanks  for  it. 


430  J^nc  Austen 

They  think  themselves  secure ;  you  do  no  more  than  what 
is  expected,  and  it  raises  no  gratitude  at  all.  If  I  were  you, 
whatever  I  did  should  be  done  at  my  own  discretion  en- 
tirely. I  would  not  bind  myself  to  allow  them  anything 
yearly.  It  may  be  very  inconvenient  some  years  to  spare  a 
hundred,  or  even  fifty  pounds,  from  our  own  expenses." 

"  I  believe  you  are  right,  my  love ;  it  will  be  better  that 
there  should  be  no  annuity  in  the  case  :  whatever  I  may 
give  them  occasionally  will  be  of  far  greater  assistance  than 
a  yearly  allowance,  because  they  would  only  enlarge  their 
style  of  living  if  they  felt  sure  of  a  larger  income,  and  would 
not  be  sixpence  the  richer  for  it  at  the  end  of  the  year.  It 
will  certainly  be  much  the  best  way.  A  present  of  fifty 
pounds  now  and  then  will  prevent  their  ever  being  distressed 
for  money,  and  will,  I  think,  be  amply  discharging  my 
promise  to  my  father." 

"  To  be  sure  it  will.  Indeed,  to  say  the  truth,  I  am  con- 
vinced within  myself  that  your  father  had  no  idea  of  your 
giving  them  any  money  at  all.  The  assistance  he  thought 
of,  I  dare  say,  was  only  such  as  might  be  reasonably  ex- 
pected of  you ;  for  instance,  such  as  looking  out  for  a 
comfortable  small  house  for  them,  helping  them  to  move 
their  things,  and  sending  them  presents  of  fish  and  game, 
and  so  forth,  whenever  they  are  in  season.  I  '11  lay  my  life 
that  he  meant  nothing  farther ;  indeed,  it  would  be  very 
strange  and  unreasonable  if  he  did.  Do  but  consider,  my 
dear  Mr.  Dashwood,  how  excessively  comfortable  your 
mother-in-law  and  her  daughters  may  live  on  the  interest  of 
seven  thousand  pounds,  besides  the  thousand  pounds  belong- 
ing to  each  of  the  girls,  which  brings  them  in  fifty  pounds  a 
year  apiece,  and  of  course,  they  will  pay  their  mother 
for  their  board  out  of  it.  Altogether,  they  will  have  five 
hundred  a  year  amongst  them ;  and  what  on  earth  can 
four  women  want  for  more  than  that?  They  will  live  so 
cheap  !     Their  housekeeping  will  be  nothing  at  all.     They 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  431 

will  have  no  carriage,  no  horses,  and  hardly  any  servant ; 
they  will  keep  no  company,  and  can  have  no  expenses 
of  any  kind  !  Only  conceive  how  comfortable  they  will 
be  !  Five  hundred  a  year !  I  am  sure  I  cannot  imagine 
how  they  will  spend  half  of  it ;  and  as  to  your  giving 
them  more,  it  is  quite  absurd  to  think  of  it.  They  will  be 
much  more  able  to  give  you  something." 

"  Upon  my  word,"  said  Mr.  Dashwood,  "  I  believe  you 
are  perfectly  right.  My  father  certainly  could  mean  no- 
thing more  by  his  request  to  me  than  what  you  say.  I 
clearly  understand  it  now,  and  I  will  strictly  fulfil  my 
engagement  by  such  acts  of  assistance  and  kindness  as 
you  have  described.  When  my  mother  removes  into 
another  house  ray  services  shall  be  readily  given  to  ac- 
commodate her  as  far  as  I  can.  Some  little  present  of 
furniture,  too,  may  be  acceptable  then." 

"  Certainly,"  returned  Mrs.  John  Dashwood.  "  But, 
however,  one  thing  must  be  considered.  When  your 
father  and  mother  moved  to  Norland,  though  the  furni- 
ture of  Shanhill  was  sold,  all  the  china,  plate,  and  linen 
was  saved,  and  is  now  left  to  your  mother.  Her  house 
will  therefore  be  almost  completely  fitted  up  as  soon  as 
she  takes  it." 

"  That  is  a  material  consideration  undoubtedly.  A 
valuable  legacy  indeed  !  and  yet  some  of  the  plate  would 
have  been  a  very  pleasant  addition  to  our  own  stock 
here." 

"  Yes ;  and  the  set  of  breakfast-china  is  twice  as  hand- 
some as  what  belongs  to  this  house ;  a  great  deal  too 
handsome,  in  my  opinion,  for  any  place  they  can  afford 
to  live  in.  But,  however,  so  it  is.  Your  father  thought 
only  of  them.  And  I  must  say  this,  that  you  owe  no 
particular  gratitude  to  him,  nor  attention  to  his  wishes ; 
for  we  very  well  know  that  if  he  could  he  would  have 
left  almost  everything  in  the  world  to  them." 


432  Jane  Austen 

This  argument  was  irresistible.  It  gave  to  his  intentions 
whatever  of  decision  was  wanting  before ;  and  he  finally 
resolved  that  it  would  be  absolutely  unnecessary,  if  not 
highly  indecorous,  to  do  more  for  the  widow  and  children 
of  his  father  than  such  kind  of  neighborly  acts  as  his  own 
wife  pointed  out. 

His  is  pre-eminently  the  standpoint  of  the  worship 
of  mammon,  which  discovers  the  highest  virtue  in 
the  biggest  bank  account.  "  His  manners  to  them, 
though  calm,  were  perfectly  kind  .  .  .  and  on  Col- 
onel Brandon's  coming  in,  soon  after  himself,  he 
eyed  him  with  a  curiosity  which  seemed  to  say 
that  he  only  wanted  to  know  him  to  be  rich,  to  be 
equally  civil  to  him"  Did  you  not  observe  this  same 
John  Dashwood  at  the  reception  last  night?  The 
world  is  full  of  him. 

When  her  father  asks  Elizabeth  Elliot  how  they 
can  retrench,   she, 

in  the  first  ardor  of  female  alarm,  set  seriously  to  think 
what  could  be  done,  and  had  finally  proposed  these  two 
branches  of  economy,  —  to  cut  off  some  unnecessary  chari- 
ties, and  to  refrain  from  new  furnishing  the  drawing-room ; 
to  which  expedients  she  afterwards  added  the  happy  thought 
of  their  taking  no  present  down  to  Anne,  as  had  been  the 
usual  yearly  custom. 

There  is  always  this  exquisite  truth  of  portrayal. 
Lady  Middleton  exclaims,  on  hearing  of  Willoughby's 
villainy,  "  Very  shocking  !  "  yet  in  the  interest  of  her 
assemblies  thinks  herself  justified  in  leaving  her  card 
with  Mrs.  Willoughby,  as  she  would  be  a  woman  of 
elegance  and  fortune.  And  her  "  calm  and  polite 
unconcern  "  is  contrasted  with  the  affectionate  anxiety 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  433 

of  Elinor,  who  is  forced  to  see,  with  that  cruel  insight 
which  experience  with  the  world  brings,  that  — 

every  qualification  is  raised  at  times  by  the  circumstances 
of  the  moment  to  more  than  its  real  value  ;  and  she  was 
sometimes  worried  down  by  officious  condolence  to  rate 
good  breeding  as  more  indispensable  to  comfort  than  good 
nature. 

XI 

Enough  has  been  shown  to  substantiate  the  claim 
we  have  made  that  Miss  Austen  occupies  the  highest 
rank  as  a  mistress  of  taste,  and  that  her  elegant  dis- 
cernment is  more  than  a  mere  worldly  insight  as  to 
social  conformities.  It  is  the  reflection  of  inward 
grace ;  the  elegance  is  of  the  mind.  And  like  some 
subtle  acid  which  can,  with  unfailing  accuracy,  dis- 
cover the  purity  or  the  impurity  of  the  metal  subjected 
to  its  test.  Miss  Austen's  real  elegance,  coming  in 
contact  with  the  false,  reveals  the  difference  between 
the  two.  Knowing  that  one  does  not  have  to  go  out 
of  one's  class  in  one's  search  for  vulgarities,  she  does 
not  go  out  of  hers  to  secure  her  contrasts :  even  Mrs. 
Elton  is  connected  with  it  I  fancy  this  keen-eyed  girl 
saw  her  Mrs.  Elton  many  times  in  her  walk  through  life. 
In  one  of  her  letters  she  records  calling  on  a  Miss  A. 
at  Lyme,  "  who  sat  darning  a  pair  of  stockings  the 
whole  of  my  visit."  ^  One  of  Mrs.  Elton's  charming 
little  familiarities  is  her  habit  of  addressing  Mr. 
Knightley  by  his  surname. 

"  And  who  do  you  think  came  in  while  we  were  there  ?  " 
Emma  was  quite  at  a  loss.     The  tone  implied  some  old 
acquaintance,  and  how  could  she  possibly  guess? 

1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  242. 
28 


434  J^^c  Austen 

"  Knightley  !  "  continued  Mrs.  Elton ;  —  "  Knightley 
himself!  Was  it  not  lucky?  For,  not  being  within 
M'hen  he  called  the  other  day,  I  had  never  seen  him 
before  ;  and,  of  course,  as  so  particular  a  friend  of  Mr.  E.'s, 
I  had  a  great  curiosity.  '  My  friend  Knightley '  had  been 
so  often  mentioned  that  I  was  really  impatient  to  see  him ; 
and  I  must  do  my  caro  sposo  the  justice  to  say  that  he 
need  not  be  ashamed  of  his  friend.  Knightley  is  quite  the 
gentleman ;  I  like  him  very  much.  Decidedly,  I  think,  a 
very  gentlemanlike  man," 

This  instance  of  unrefinement  was  perhaps  not  so' 
uncommon  in  Miss  Austen's  day  as  may  be  supposed. 
Mr.  Russell  tells  of  Lady  Holland,  "  whose  curiosity 
was  restrained  by  no  considerations  of  courtesy," 
questioning  the  famous  Henry  Luttrell  about  his  age : 
"  Now,  Luttrell,  we  are  all  dying  to  know  how  old 
you  are.  Just  tell  me."  "  If  I  live  till  next  year," 
said  Luttrell,  in  reply,  "I  shall  be  —  devilish  old."^ 
"The  Miss  Burneys,"  says  this  delightful  raconteur, 
"  who  had  been  the  correspondents  of  Horace  Wal- 
pole,  and  who  carried  down  to  the  fifties  the  most 
refined  traditions  of  the  social  life  of  the  last  century, 
habitually  *  damned  '  the  teakettle  if  it  burned  their 
fingers,  and  called  their  male  friends  by  their  sur- 
names. '  Come,  Milnes,  will  you  have  a  cup  of 
tea?'  'Now,  Macaulay,  we  have  had  enough  of 
that  subject.'  "  ^ 

Her  Mrs.  Eltons  may  still  be  found  in  every  parish. 
This  cannot  be  said  of  the  characters  of  most  fiction 
one  hundred  years  old,  and  it  is  one  of  the  chief 
"  notes  "  of  her  genius.     I  doubt  if  you  could  catch 

1  '  Collections  and  Recollections,'  p.  176. 
a  lb.,  p.  76. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  435 

her  napping  on  any  of  the  small  points  of  etiquette 
mentioned  in  her  novels.  She  has  been  criticised  for 
allowing  Mr.  Bingley  to  send  out  verbal  invitations  to 
balls ;  which  is  as  valuable  as  most  criticisms  of  the 
sort,  because  "  Mrs.  Bennet  .  .  .  was  particularly  flat- 
tered by  receiving  an  invitation  from  Mr.  Bingley 
himself,  instead  of  a  ceremonious  card."  The  special 
fact  recorded,  the  particular  character  emphasized, 
in  Miss  Austen's  work  are  always  true  in  themselves, 
true  to  the  circumstance  and  type  of  the  moment, 
but  —  and  here  lies  the  line  of  demarkation  —  also 
true  to  the  broad  general  type  governing  all  ages 
and  above  all  changes  of  time  and  custom.  The 
reader  cannot  construct  for  himself  any  broad  picture 
of  the  times  out  of  '  Clarissa  Harlowe,'  The  concern  is 
entirely  local ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  book  has 
no  living  human  interest  to-day,  because  of  its  discon- 
nection with  the  interests  which  abide  through  all 
ages.  Richardson  is  not  an  observer  of  general  life, 
and  we  therefore  get  from  him  characters,  but  not 
types.  This  is  true  also,  in  a  less  degree,  of  Miss 
Edgeworth,  for  we  are  not  so  certain  what  her  young 
women  would  do  in  other  circumstances  than  those 
in  which  she  had  placed  them  ;  whereas  Elinor  Dash- 
wood  and  Anne  Elliot  might  be  introduced  into  any 
situation  without  any  fear  as  to  their  ease  of  behavior 
there.  The  romanticists  suffer  from  the  opposite 
fault,  for  with  them  the  characters  become  mere 
chess-pieces.  How  many  names  can  even  the  in- 
terested reader  of  Walpole  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe  recall 
to  memory?  It  is  a  great  distinction  to  be  known  as 
the  creator  of  a  character  which  remains  a  character 
while  not  ceasing  to  be  a  type,  and  remains  a  type 
without  becoming  a  puppet. 


43^  Jane  Austen 

*  Northanger  Abbey,'  '  Pride  and  Prejudice/  and 
'  Sense  and  Sensibility '  are  contemporaneous  with 
'Camilla;'  yet  'Camilla'  is  as  extinct  as  the  pter- 
odactyl, while  Catherine  Morland,  Elizabeth  Bennet, 
and  Elinor  Dashwood  still  interest  us  as  deeply  as 
the  heroine  of  any  novel  written  in  the  past  ten 
years.  They  are  as  real  to  us  as  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots,  and  visitors  to  the  scenes  they  once  graced 
with  their  imagined  presence  are  chiefly  interested 
in  the  localities  for  that  reason.  Apropos,  there  is  a 
good  story  told  of  Tennyson  at  Lyme-Regis.  When 
some  one  wanted  to  show  him  the  precise  spot  where 
the  Duke  of  Monmouth  landed,  he  broke  out: 
"  Don't  talk  to  me  of  the  Duke  of  Monmouth.  Show 
me  the  precise  spot  where  Louise  Musgrove  fell." 
Miss  Austen  did  not  conform  to  the  favorite  stand- 
ards of  her  day  as  closely  as  did  Miss  Burney  and 
Miss  Ferrier;  yet  by  reason  of  her  attitude  towards 
the  abiding  realities  of  every  day  she  is  alive  to  this 
day  with  a  perpetual  youth,  while  they  are  read  only 
as  "  curiosities  of  literature."  She  conformed  to  the 
inner  sense  appropriate  to  all  time. 

If,  as  Aristotle  maintains,  epic  and  tragic  poetry  is 
more  philosophical  than  history,  because  the  latter, 
dealing  with  the  individual,  may  fail  to  illustrate  the 
general,  whereas  the  former  gives  a  comprehensive 
general  view  from  which  the  particular  may  be  de- 
duced,—  if  this  is  true,  it  is  equally  true  of  the  novel, 
which  would  doubtless  have  been  included  in  Aris- 
totle's comparison  had  it  existed  in  his  day.  What 
we  ask  for  in  the  novel  is  the  general,  with  the  indi- 
vidual in  agreement  with  it,  not  an  exception  to  it. 
This  is  what  makes  nearly  every  one  of  Miss  Austen's 
characters  a  success.     The  curates  in  'Shirley'  are  a 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  437 

comic  failure  because  the  indignation,  the  personal 
resentment,  of  their  creator  interfered  with  the  ob- 
jective truth ;  and  a  comparison  with  the  elder  lady's 
Mr.  Collins,  Mr.  Elton,  and  Dr.  Grant  will  illustrate 
the  point.  Instead  of  a  passionate  scorn,  there  is  an 
intellectual  contempt.  The  humor  softens  the  obser- 
vation, and  the  interest  is  iti  the  characters,  not  away 
from  them,  as  with  Miss  Bronte.  Because  of  this, 
notwithstanding  the  smallness  of  Miss  Austen's  scale, 
—  notwithstanding  the  "  three  or  four  families  in  a 
country  village  "  which  she  deemed  enough  to  work 
on,  her  scheme  is  not  provincial.  She  is  parochial, 
but  not  provincial,  for  it  is  not  the  limited  scene 
which  makes  for  provincialism  in  literature,  but  the 
spirit  which  controls  the  painter  of  the  scene. 
'  Middlemarch '  is  a  study  of  a  provincial  com- 
munity, not  a  provincial  study.  Lydgate  and  Doro- 
thea, typifying  the  universal  caught  in  the  network 
of  the  provincial,  constitute  the  world-wide  interest 
of  the  story.  So  in  Miss  Austen  we  get  a  perfect 
picture  of  the  country  life  of  the  early  century;  her 
microcosm  corresponds  with  the  macrocosm,  and  the 
universal  is  there  in  the  individual.^  She  is  old- 
fashioned,  and  yet  modern,  —  a  proof  of  which 
uniquely  distinguished  position  is  that  it  is  impos- 

1  It  is  characteristic  of  the  important  distinction  between  these 
two  things  that  while  we  see  certain  situations  in  Miss  Austen's  fiction 
prompted  by  similar  situations  in  her  family,  we  cannot  place  the 
scenes  as  we  can  with  Charlotte  Bronte.  The  son  of  Mr.  Weston 
becomes  a  Churchill  as  the  son  of  Mr.  Austen  becomes  a  Knight. 
William  Price  was  presumably  suggested  by  one  of  her  sailor  brothers. 
There  is  the  same  relationship  between  Chawton  Cottage  and  Chaw- 
ton  House  that  there  is  between  the  Great  House  and  Upper  Cross 
Cottage  in  '  Persuasion.'  But  her  art  makes  the  similarity  purely  ac- 
cidental ;  and  whenever  she  wishes  to  hide  a  locality,  she  does  so. 


43^  Jane  Austen 

sible  to  burlesque  her.  Of  none  of  the  works  of  her 
female  contemporaries  could  scenes  be  collected  for 
theatrical  representation  to-day,  unless  with  the 
avowed   intention  of  caricature. 


XII 

In  its  last  analysis  genius  is  common-sense.  How 
can  it  be  when  it  is  so  uncommon?  But  common- 
sense,  too,  is  uncommon;  and  the  one  is  no  more 
uncommon  than  the  other.  The  Aristotelian  view  is 
that  this  sense  is  the  faculty  which  has  the  power  to 
reduce  the  other  conflicting  senses  into  unity,  —  that 
it  is  the  schoolmaster  of  the  senses.  That  implies 
power  not  given  to  all :  it  is  common  in  a  compli- 
mentary sense,  only,  —  applicable  to  the  mind  as  it 
should  be,  and  as  it  would  be  if  unhampered  by  error 
and  vice.  A  man  with  a  squint  cannot  see  straight; 
and  those  possessed  of  mental  squints  are  far  more 
numerous  than  the  physically  deformed. 

The  appreciation  of  the  totality  of  impressions  re- 
quires gifts  denied  the  herd,  or  which  the  herd  decline 
to  use.  One  perceives  sight;  another,  touch;  a  third, 
smell ;  but  the  master  only  perceives  the  general  sense 
of  life  —  which  is  a  second  definition  of  common-sense. 
If  we  adopt  the  Scotch  philosophy,  the  point  is  still 
maintainable,  for  it  also  implies  a  faculty,  — a  power 
to  test  truth  by  "  the  complement  of  those  cognitions 
or  convictions  which  we  receive  from  nature."  But 
how  few  are  really  receptive  !  And  how  few  of  those 
few  make  use  of  their  receptivity  !  Intellectual  train- 
ing is  not  essential.  The  genius  may  be  a  backwoods- 
man, and  the  professor  of  mental  science  may  not  be 
a  genius.     The  power  may  be  of  the  soul;  insight 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  439 

may  take  the  place  of  pains-taking  system;  and  in- 
sight is  but  the  flash-light  manifestation  of  this  same 
faculty. 

The  metaphysical  definitions  of  common-sense 
meet  only  that  constitution  of  the  human  mind  which 
is  beneficently  full-powered.  It  is  the  normal  mind 
intended  by  the  Great  Framer,  not  the  average  mind 
of  our  acquaintance.  Genius  is  uncommon;  and  it 
is  that  general  sense  which  is  called  "  common,"  but 
which  becomes  special  (through  the  general  incapacity 
to  use  it),  and  therefore  uncommon. 

Miss  Austen's  near  approach  to  this  universal  stand- 
ard is  what  lifts  her  above  the  passing  standards  of 
any  particular  time.  Common-sense,  and  humor, 
which  is  its  minister,  the  dramatic  gift,  and  the  con- 
stant remembrance  of  the  purpose  of  the  novel,  are 
what  make  her  as  distinguished  to-day  as  when  she 
wrote  her  immortal  fictions. 

Her  view  is  "  worldly,"  let  us  admit.  She  is  not 
moved  by  any  deep  spirituality,  for  reasons  that  we 
have  seen.  Her  books  generally  open  with  an  in- 
ventory of  the  earthly  possessions  of  her  characters. 
Her  remarks  are  sometimes  tinged  by  a  vague  "tired," 
or  perhaps  one  had  better  say  impatient,  note,  as 
though  the  highest  trust  had  been  dampened  by  ex- 
perience beyond  much  hope  of  a  return  to  childish 
optimism.  There  is  not  the  slightest  bitterness,  but 
the  touch  is  delicately  unexpectant  of  enthusiasm. 
Her  letters  are  witty,  bantering,  sprightly,  rather  than 
blithe.  After  describing  a  new  hat  to  her  sister,  she 
writes :  "  I  flatter  myself,  however,  that  you  can 
understand  very  little  of  it  from  this  description. 
Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  ever  offer  such  encour- 
agement to  explanations  as  to   give  a  clear  one   on 


440  Jane  Austen 

any  occasion  myself."  ^  She  can  speak  coolly  of '  Don 
Giovanni ' :  "  They  revelled  last  night  in  '  Don  Juan,' 
whom  we  left  in  hell  at  half-past  eleven.  We  had 
scaramouch  and  a  ghost  and  were  delighted.  I  speak 
o{  them  ;  my  delight  was  very  tranquil."  ^  And  she 
confesses  Miss  O'Neill  in  *  Isabella '  not  equal  to  her 
expectation :  "  I  fancy  I  want  something  more  than  can 
be.  I  took  two  pocket-handkerchiefs,  but  had  very 
little  occasion  for  either.  She  is  an  elegant  creature, 
however,  and  hugs  Mr.  Young  delightfully."  ^ 

One  would  call  Miss  Austen  a  thorough  woman  of 
the  world  but  for  the  danger  of  misconstruing  the  term 
into  something  more  than  it  stands  for  in  her  case. 
She  certainly  took  a  real  delight  in  its  obvious  pleas- 
ures ;  but  her  sense  of  humor  appreciated  its  absurd- 
ities too  keenly  to  permit  her  wishing  to  become  a 
devotee  of  fashion.  She  is  distinctly  not  a  snob,  for 
she  makes  Mrs.  Gardiner,  a  City  woman,  as  real  a 
lady  as  any  of  her  characters,  —  nay,  much  more  of  a 
^^«^/^woman  than  Lady  de  Bourgh;  and  Darcy  has  to 
blush  for  his  aunt  as  much  as  for  his  mother-in-law. 
The  "  impatient "  note  is  inseparable  from  a 
"worldly"  view;  and  her  elegant  femininity  trans- 
muted what  would  have  been  cynicism  in  an  equally 
endowed  male  into  its  softened  counterpart. 


1  Brabourne,  vol.  i.,  p.  187.  Here  see  the  modern  note  of  impa- 
tience.    Miss  Repplier  might  have  written  it  yesterday. 

2  lb.,  ii.,  p.  149.  There  was  good  reason  for  the  tired  note  on 
this  occasion,  for  they  got  a  great  dea\  for  their  money  in  those  days 
at  the  opera.  On  this  particular  night,  '  Don  Giovanni '  was  the 
last  of  "  three  musical  things."  And  after  the  '  Merchant  of  Venice,' 
on  another  occasion,  EUiston  appeared  in  a  three-act  comedy.  [Bra- 
bourne,  ii.,  p.  323.]  The  "continuous  performance" is  evidently  not 
a  modern  invention. 

'  Brabourne,  ii.,  p.  321. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  441 

She  is  all  the  moralist  that  a  novel  writer  need  be. 
Too  true  an  artist,  too  keen  a  humorist,  to  obtrude 
the  moral,  it  is  nevertheless  there.  Granting  things 
which  exist  in  Miss  Austen's  case,  a  "worldly"  writer 
can  best  criticise  worldliness,  —  witness  Thackeray. 
The  confessed  "  worldliness "  of  him  and  of  Miss 
Austen  passes  into  the  satire  of  the  thing  they  are  in 
their  separate  degrees;  which  is  what  makes  them 
lovable,  though  they  would  be  more  lovable  were 
they  less  "worldly"  without  at  the  same  time  being 
less  human,  which  is  generally  the  fault  of  the  less 
worldly. 

But  all  serious  novels  are,  after  all,  novels  of  pur- 
pose. If  we  do  not  find  any  deep  emotion  in  Miss 
Austen's  ethics,  we  must  recall  once  more  the  times 
in  which  she  wrote.  It  was,  in  the  first  place,  a  great 
accomplishment  to  make  a  novel  at  once  interesting 
and  clean ;  for  cleanliness  is  not  only  next  to  godli- 
ness, it  is  next  before  it.  There  was,  besides  the 
clean  hands  of  Miss  Austen,  the  pure  heart;  and  her 
distinguished  delicacy  was  but  the  reflection  of  a 
sound  inward  undefilement.  The  common-sense  of 
which  we  have  spoken  throws  the  situation  into  a 
clear  light,  in  which  morality  can  work  out  its  destiny. 
"  What  have  wealth  and  grandeur  to  do  with  happi- 
ness?" cries  the  sentimental  Marianne.  "Grandeur 
has  but  little,"  says  Elinor,  "  but  wealth  has  much  to 
do  with  it."  The  purpose  of  this  novel  is  thus  to  con- 
trast the  "sense"  of  Elinor  with  the  "  sensibility"  of 
Marianne,  and  to  show  that  the  real  sensibility  lay  in 
Elinor.  "Sensibility"  in  that  day  —  and  not  exclu- 
sively in  that  day  either  —  was  really  a  gross  senti- 
mentality, all  the  more  harmfully  fatal  in  that  it  was 
cultivated  as  ideally  true.     It  is  not  the  frauds  that 


442  Jane  Austen 

do  the  most  harm  in  the  world ;  it  is  the  honestly 
mistaken  people.     And  the  conclusion  is  that  — 

Marianne  Dashwood  was  born  to  an  extraordinary  fate. 
She  was  born  to  discover  the  falsehood  of  her  own  opinions, 
and  to  counteract  by  her  conduct  her  most  favorite  maxims. 
She  was  born  to  overcome  an  affection  formed  so  late  in 
life  as  at  seventeen  and,  with  no  sentiment  superior  to  strong 
esteem  and  lively  friendship,  voluntarily  to  give  her  hand  to 
another !  and  that  other,  a  man  who  had  suffered  no  less 
than  herself  under  the  event  of  a  former  attachment,  whom, 
two  years  before  she  had  considered  too  old  to  be  married,  — 
and  who  still  sought  the  constitutional  safeguard  of  a  flannel 
waistcoat ! 

That  is  not  the  only  moral,  however,  of '  Sense  and 
Sensibility.'  Selfishness  is  there,  as  elsewhere,  the 
chief  object  of  Miss  Austen's  satire ;  and  Elinor's  just 
course  is  contrasted  not  only  with  her  sister's  absorb- 
ing sentimentality,  but  with  the  equally  insistent 
selfishness  of  Lucy  Steele. 

The  whole  of  Lucy's  behavior  in  the  affair,  and  the 
prosperity  which  crowned  it,  therefore,  may  be  held  forth 
as  a  most  encouraging  instance  of  what  an  earnest,  an 
unceasing  attention  to  self-interest,  however  its  progress 
may  be  apparently  obstructed,  will  do  in  securing  every 
advantage  of  fortune,  with  no  other  sacrifice  than  that  of 
time  and  conscience. 

There  are  not  many  stronger  pictures  in  fiction  of 
a  busy-bodied  selfishness  than  the  scenes  in  which 
Mrs.  Norris  and  Mrs.  John  Dashwood  disport  them- 
selves. She  does  not  say,  like  Miss  Edgeworth,"  This 
is  taken  from  real  life ;  "  she  has  her  laugh  at  the 
didacticists  who  conclude  with  a  sermon;  she  allows 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  443 

her  delighted  readers  to  apply  the  moral,  and  finishes 
'  Northanger  Abbey  '  with  shocking  levity : 

.  .  .  and  professing  myself  .  .  .  convinced  that  the 
General's  unjust  interference,  so  far  from  being  really  inju- 
rious to  their  felicity,  was  perhaps  rather  conducive  to  it, 
by  improving  their  knowledge  of  each  other,  and  adding 
strength  to  their  attachment,  I  leave  it  to  be  settled  by 
whomsoever  it  may  concern  whether  the  tendency  of  this 
work  be  altogether  to  recommend  paternal  tyranny  or 
reward  filial  disobedience. 

But  the  moral  is  nowhere  more  evident  than  in 
Miss  Austen,  and  the  Nemesis  never  more  sure.  Her 
dramatic  sense  always  prompts  the  comic  situation, 
as  well  as  the  comic  dialogue.  How  delicious  the 
humor  with  which  the  appreciation  of  Miss  Bates  is 
conveyed  for  the  good  time  she  had  had  at  the 
party  the  previous  evening !  The  good  lady  calls 
from  her  window  to  Mr.  Knightley  passing  on  horse- 
back below  — 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Knightley,  what  a  delightful  party  last  night ! 
how  extremely  pleasant !  Did  you  ever  see  such  dancing  ? 
Was  not  it  delightful?  Miss  Woodhouse  and  Mr.  Frank 
Churchill;  I  never  saw  anything  equal  to  it"  — 

those  two  young  persons  being  in  the  adjoining  room, 
and,  of  course,  hearing  it  all.    Mr.  Knightley  replies: 

"  Oh,  very  delightful  indeed  !  I  can  say  nothing  less, 
for  I  suppose  Miss  Woodhouse  and  Mr.  Frank  Churchill 
are  hearing  everything  that  passes.  And  (raising  his  voice 
still  more)  I  do  not  see  why  Miss  Fairfax  should  not  be 
mentioned,  too,  I  think  Miss  Fairfax  dances  very  well ; 
and  Mrs.  Weston  is  the  very  best  country- dance  player, 
without  exception,  in  England.     Now,  if  your  friends  have 


444  J^^^  Austen 

any  gratitude,  they  will  say  something  pretty  loud  about  you 
and  me  in  return." 

This  dramatic  power  in  a  purely  comic  scene 
prompts  one  to  expect  a  mastery  of  irony  extended 
to  the  moral  situations ;  and  the  expectation  is  ful- 
filled. Lady  de  Bourgh's  visit  to  Elizabeth  brings 
about  the  very  thing  she  wishes  to  prevent.  Mrs. 
Norris  is  compelled  to  live  with  the  disgraced  niece 
she  has  chiefly  helped  to  spoil ;  and  Mrs.  Fer- 
rars  disinherits  Edward  in  behalf  of  Robert,  who 
straightway  marries  the  girl  his  brother  was  disinher- 
ited for  not  giving  up.  Of  the  evil  effects  of  riotous 
match-making,  Emma,  Mrs.  Norris,  and  Mrs.  Jennings 
are  standing  warnings ;  and  for  Emma  there  is  a 
special  Nemesis  for  each  of  her  offences,  —  the  first 
making  the  man  she  despises  propose  to  her,  and  the 
second  making  the  girl  she  despises  fall  in  love  with 
the  man  she  wishes  to  propose  to  her !  It  is  no  less 
—  it  is  all  the  more  —  a  Nemesis  because  it  wears  a 
comic  mask. 

Not  that  she  is  frivolous  in  treating  of  the  graver 
issues  of  life.  She  does  not  flirt  with  tragedy;  she 
avoids  it.  "  Let  other  pens  dwell  on  guilt  and  mis- 
ery," she  says.  "  I  quit  such  odious  subjects  as  soon 
as  I  can,  impatient  to  restore  everybody  not  greatly 
in  fault  themselves  to  tolerable  comfort,  and  to  have 
done  with  all  the  rest."  Her  logical  comedy  leads 
up  to  the  tragic  episode  in  'Mansfield  Park;  '  but 
because  her  field  is  comedy,  the  circumstance  is 
episodical.  The  treatment  is  severe  enough  while  it 
lasts.  "In  all  the  important  preparations  of  the 
mind  she  was  complete;  being  prepared  for  matri- 
mony by  a  hatred  of  home  restraint  and  tranquillity, 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  445 

by  the  misery  of  disappointed  affection,  and  contempt 
for  the  man  she  was  to  marry.     The  rest  might  wait." 

Too  late  he  became  aware  how  unfavorable  to  the  char- 
acter of  any  young  people  must  be  the  totally  opposite 
treatment  which  Maria  and  Julia  had  always  been  experi- 
encing at  home,  where  the  excessive  indulgence  and  flattery 
of  their  aunt  had  been  continually  contrasted  with  his  own 
severity.  He  saw  how  ill  he  had  judged,  in  expecting  to 
counteract  what  was  wrong  in  Mrs.  Norris  by  its  reverse  in 
himself,  clearly  saw  that  he  had  but  increased  the  evil,  by 
teaching  them  to  repress  their  spirits  in  his  presence,  so  as 
to  make  their  real  disposition  unknown  to  him,  and  sending 
them  all  for  their  indulgences  to  a  person  who  had  been 
able  to  attach  them  only  by  the  blindness  of  her  affection 
and  the  excess  of  her  praise.  Here  had  been  grievous 
mismanagement ;  but,  bad  as  it  was,  he  gradually  grew  to 
feel  that  it  had  not  been  the  most  direful  mistake  in  his 
plan  of  education.  Something  must  have  been  wanting 
within,  or  time  would  have  worn  away  much  of  its  ill  effect. 
He  feared  that  principle,  active  principle,  had  been  wanting ; 
that  they  had  never  been  properly  taught,  to  govern  their 
inclinations  and  tempers  by  that  sense  of  duty  which  can 
alone  suffice.  They  had  been  instructed  theoretically  in 
their  religion,  but  never  required  to  bring  it  into  daily 
practice.  To  be  distinguished  for  elegance  and  accomplish- 
ments— the  authorized  object  of  their  youth  —  could  have 
had  no  useful  influence  that  way,  no  moral  effect  on  the 
mind.  He  had  meant  them  to  be  good,  but  his  cares  had 
been  directed  to  the  understanding  and  manners,  not  the 
disposition  ;  and  of  the  necessity  of  self-denial  and  humility 
he  feared  they  had  never  heard  from  any  lips  that  could 
profit  them. 

Bitterly  did  he  deplore  a  deficiency  which  now  he  could 
scarcely  comprehend  to  have  been  possible.     Wretchedly 


446  Jane  Austen 

did  he  feel  that,  with  all  the  cost  and  care  of  an  anxious  and 
expensive  education,  he  had  brought  up  his  daughters 
without  their  understanding  their  first  duties,  or  his  being 
acquainted  with  their  character  and  temper.* 

This  proves  that  when  the  opportunity  called  for 
it,  she  could  be  sufficiently  serious.  Generally,  it  is 
enough  to  present  the  subject  with  careless  ease. 

She  had  only  two  daughters,  both  of  whom  she  had  lived 
to  see  respectably  married,  and  she  had  now,  therefore, 
nothing  to  do  but  to  marry  all  the  rest  of  the  world. 

We  respect  Edmund  Bertram  for  awakening  to  the 
real  unworthiness  of  Mary  Crawford  through  the  dis- 
closure of  her  frivolous  view  of  his  sister's  fall.  This 
is  the  unanswerable  argument  for  all  time  to  the 
charge  of  undue  levity  on  the  part  of  Miss  Austen. 
"This  is  what  the  world  does,"  she  makes  him  say  of 
Mary,  and  the  "  world  "  includes  parents  and  relatives. 


XIII 

This  brings  us  to  the  amusing  picture  of  the 
clergy  of  her  day,  as  represented  in  these  novels. 
It  is  safer  to  be  guided  by  the  poetry  and  fiction 
and  general  literature  of  a  day,  in  attempting  to 
define  its  religious   side,  than   by   its   avowed   the- 

1  The  reason  for  her  strong  disapproval  of  the  Mansfield  Park 
theatricals  is  not  only  because  of  the  absence  of  Sir  Thomas  from 
home,  but  largely  also  because  of  the  nature  of  the  play  selected,  that 
piece  being  not  unlike  the  '  Love  for  Love  '  which  put  Miss  Mirvan 
and  Evelina  "perpetually  out  of  countenance  "  at  Drury  Lane.  Had 
something  like  the  *  Duologues/  from  Miss  Austen's  own  books,  been 
available  then,  the  plot  would  have  taken  another  course  in  her 
hands. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  447 

ology,  this  latter  being  too  frequently  an  intolerant 
revolt  from  what  the  day  really  stood  for.  The 
Methodist  movement  had  not  spent  itself  in  Miss 
Austen's  time,  and  the  Evangelical  revival  was  at 
its  height.  The  roughness  of  the  age  may  be  seen 
in  the  polemics  which  we  now  read — if  we  read 
them  at  all — with  amazement;  but  it  should  be 
remembered  that  not  that  chiefly,  but  rather  the 
prevailing  laxity  of  faith  and  the  deadness  of  en- 
thusiasm against  which  this  bluff  heartiness  of  con- 
viction and  hatred  of  opposing  views  to  what  was 
considered  a  saving  belief  finally  threw  itself,  were 
the  leading  characteristics  of  the  times.  Toplady, 
the  choice  saint  of  the  English  Calvinists,  and  the 
author  of  the  '  Rock  of  Ages,'  attacked  Wesley  in 
pamphlets  entitled  *  An  Old  Fox  Tarred  and  Feath- 
ered,' and  wrote,  "  I  much  question  whether  a 
man  that  dies  an  Arminian  can  go  to  heaven." 
"  A  low  and  puny  tadpole  in  divinity  "  is  his  sum- 
ing  up  of  the  founder  of  Methodism.^  "  A  pair 
of  horrible  liars,"  he  calls  him  and  his  co-worker, 
Sellon ;  ^  and  Rowland  Hill  cries  out  on  him  as  a 
"  gray-headed  enemy  of  all  righteousness."  ^ 

But  this  is  merely  the  result  of  an  earnest  religious 
escaping  in  angry  protest  from  the  crass  carelessness 

1  '  Works  of  Augustus  M.  Toplady/  six  vols.  London,  printed  for 
Wm.  Baynes  &  Son,  1825,  vol.  v.,  p.  442. 

2  lb.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  344. 

'  '  Imposure  Detected  and  the  Dead  vindicated ;  in  a  Letter  to  a 
Friend :  containing  some  gentle  Strictures  on  the  false  and  libelous 
Harangue  lately  delivered  by  Mr.  John  Wesley,  upon  his  laying  the 
first  corner-stone  of  his  new  Dissenting  Meeting-house,  near  the  City 
Road.'  This  "  Evangelical  "  preacher,  however,  repented,  in  his  old 
age,  of  the  harshness  of  his  controversial  style  ;  and  in  justice  to  the 
Calvinists  it  must  be  said  that  the  Arminians  —  including  their 
English  leader  —  were  themselves  not  altogether  guiltless  of  epithets. 


44  8  Jane  Austen 

and  worse  of  the  church  of  that  and  the  preceding 
epoch.  *'  The  pubHc  have  long  remarked  with  in- 
dignation," says  Knox,  "  that  some  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished coxcombs,  drunkards,  debauchees,  and 
gamesters  who  figure  at  the  watering  places  and  at  all 
pubHc  places  of  resort,  are  young  men  of  the  sacer- 
dotal order."  ^  And  Arthur  Young  records  hearing 
of  this  advertisement:  "  Wanted,  a  curacy  in  a  good 
sporting  country,  where  the  duty  is  light  and  the 
neighborhood  convivial."  ^  The  truthfulness  of 
Crabbe's  picture  of  the  average  young  parson  has 
not  been  disputed: 

A  jovial  youth  who  thinks  his  Sunday  task 
As  much  as  God  or  man  can  fairly  ask. 


Fiddling  and  fishing  were  his  arts ;  at  times 
He  altered  sermons  and  he  aim'd  at  rhymes, 
And  his  fair  friends,  not  yet  intent  on  cards. 
Oft  he  amused  with  riddles  and  charades. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  unfortunate  schisms 
in  the  English  Church  at  this  time  were  in  large  part 
the  result  of  the  worldly  indifference  of  the  bishops. 
A  little  of  the  "  sweet  reasonableness  "  of  their  pro- 
fessed leader  would  have  urged  them  to  appropriate 
to  that  which  was  already  "  established  "  whatever  was 
convincing  in  this  revival,  checking  the  exuberance 

1  Essay  No.  i8,  in  '  Essays  Moral  and  Literary,'  by  Vicesimus 
Knox,  M.A. :  a  new  edition  complete  in  one  volume.  London  :  Jones 
&  Co.,  1827.  This  has  particular  weight  coming  from  one  of  the 
most  liberal  and  urbane  clergymen  of  the  period.  See  his  Essay  No. 
10,  on  'The  Respectableness  of  the  Clergy,'  in  which  he  argues  for 
the  dignified  ease  of  the  bishops  and  deans,  which  has  so  frequently 
been  the  object  of  attack  from  less  conservative  writers. 

2  'Travels  in  France  during  the  Years  1788-8-9.'  By  Arthur 
Young.     London  :  Geo.  Bell  &  Sons,  1890,  p.  327. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  449 

while  welcoming  the  enthusiasm.  They  were  too 
comfortable,  however,  in  their  political  security  to 
allow  any  disturbance  of  their  complacent  orthodoxy. 
That  wise  observer  Crabbe,  once  more,  summed  up 
the  typical  clergyman  in  his  Vicar : 

Mild  were  his  doctrines  and  not  one  discourse 

But  gained  in  softness  what  it  lost  in  force. 

If  ever  fretful  thought  disturbed  his  breast, 

If  aught  of  gloom  that  cheerful  mind  oppressed, 

It  sprang  from  innovation  ;  it  was  then 

He  spake  of  mischief  made  by  restless  men. 

Habit  with  him  was  all  the  test  of  truth  : 

It  must  be  right;  I  've  done  it  from  my  youth. 

The  extravagances  of  Methodism  were  regarded  as 
a  "  spiritual  influenza,"  and  a  conservative  writer  like 
Goldsmith  finds  an  excuse  for  an  opposing  coldness 
in  that  "  men  of  real  sense  and  understanding  prefer 
a  prudent  mediocrity  to  a  precarious  popularity, 
and  fearing  to  outdo  their  duty,  leave  it  half  done."  ^ 
And  yet  Goldsmith  was  the  friend  of  the  "  orthodox  " 
Dr.  Warner  who,  describing  a  dinner  with  some  boon 
companions,  writes:  "We  .  .  .  have  just  parted  in 
a  tolerable  state  of  insensibility  to  the  ills  of  human 
life."^  And  he  might  have  had  a  more  realizing  sense 
of  how  this  awakened  conscience  was  endeavoring  to 
reform  such  habits  among  Christians.  Yet  it  is  always 
easy  to  fall  back  on  a  lazy  piety  —  only,  we  don't  call 
it  "  lazy,"  but  "  quiet  "  —  as  an  excusing  substitute  for 
the  noise  of  a  "  popular  "  religion.  We  presume  that 
the  American  Christian  Endeavorers  singing  revival 

1  Essay  IV. :  '  On  the  English  Clergy  and  Popular  Preachers.' 

2  '  George  Selwyn  and  His  Contemporaries,'  with  Memoirs  and 
Notes  by  John  Heneage  Jesse.  London:  Richard  Bentley,  1844, 
vol.  iv.,  p.  137. 

29 


45©  Jaiie  Austen 

hymns  in  Westminster  Abbey  last  summer  had  a 
somewhat  similar  effect  upon  the  dean  and  chapter 
of  that  ancient  fane  to  that  produced  by  the  enthu- 
siasm of  the  early  Methodists  upon  the  excellent 
Goldsmith. 

That  was  the  age  of  formalism,  not  this,  as  some 
vainly  imagine.  And  Miss  Austen's  clergymen  are, 
as  are  all  her  characters,  true  types  of  that  age; 
only,  in  accordance  with  her  determination  not  to 
draw  vice,  she  purposely  chooses  inoffensive  types. 
It  was  not  in  her  to  be  moved,  like  George  Eliot,  to 
embody  the  ideal  of  a  real  sanctity  in  any  of  her 
clergymen.  There  were  Tryans  in  her  day,  but  she 
did  not  come  in  contact  with  them,  and  would  not 
have  understood  them  if  she  had.  At  a  time  when 
fashionable  society  held  assemblies  on  Good  Friday 
evening,^  it  would  require  more  religious  zeal  than 
Miss  Austen  possessed  to  picture  other  than  the 
ecclesiastical  attitude  she  was  familiar  with;  which 
was  orderly,  decent,  unharassed  by  doubt  and  con- 
victions, full  of  an  Erastian  content,  classical,  cold. 
Religion,  as  she  knew  it,  was  near  to  her,  but  it  took 
the  form  of  a  well-governing  morality  rather  than 
livelier  aspects.  It  was  near  to  her,  and  therefore 
she  did  not  talk  much  about  it.  She  was  of  the  age 
of  Goldsmith  and  Johnson  in  point  of  religion,  and 
would  doubtless  have  laughed  sympathetically  over 
the  doctor's  reply  to  Miss  Monkton's  declaration  that 
she  was  affected  by  the  pathos  of  Sterne,  "  Why,  that 
is  because,  dearest,  you  are  a  dunce." 

See  how  nearly  Miss  Austen  reflects  the  times. 
Arthur  Young's  "  advertisement"  is  recalled  when  we 
read  of  Charles  Hayter's  living,  in  '  Persuasion.' 
1  '  Collections  and  Recollections,'  p.  87. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  451 

"  And  a  very  good  living  it  was,  only  five  and  twenty 
miles  from  Uppercross,  and  in  a  very  fine  country  —  fine 
part  of  Dorsetshire,  in  the  centre  of  some  of  the  best  pre- 
serves in  the  kingdom,  surrounded  by  three  great  proprie- 
tors, each  more  careful  and  jealous  than  the  other  j  and  to 
two  of  the  three,  at  least,  Charles  Hayter  might  get  a  special 
recommendation.  Not  that  he  will  value  it  as  he  ought ; 
Charles  is  too  cool  about  sporting.  That 's  the  worst  of 
him." 

A  Church  living — mark  the  word.  It  is  thought  of 
chiefly  for  its  value,  as  a  means  of  material  happi- 
ness, and  for  offering  a  parson  the  opportunity  to 
do  what  he  most  wants  to  do  —  marry.  It  is  natural 
that  we  think  of  these  charade-writing  priests  as  men 
rather  than  as  clergymen,  and  so  Miss  Austen  regards 
them ;  these  Tilneys,  who  spend  most  of  their  time 
at  Bath  and  at  their  father's  manors  making  them- 
selves agreeable  to  the  ladies,  and  interrupting  such 
pleasant  pastimes  with  an  enforced  Sunday  now  and 
then  at  their  rectories ;  and  these  Eltons,  who  are  in 
error  only  when  they  fall  in  love  with  the  wrong  girl, 
and  not  when  they  pass  their  mornings  reading 
poetry  and  making  conundrums  with  the  right  one. 
Mr,  Collins  avows  his  determination  to  "  demean 
himself  with  grateful  respect  towards  "  his  patroness, 
and  "  be  ever  ready  to  perform  those  rites  and  cere- 
monies which  are  instituted  by  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land." For  "  even  the  clergyman,"  says  Mrs.  Clay, 
"  even  the  clergyman,  you  know,  is  obliged  to  go  into 
infected  rooms,  and  expose  his  health  and  looks  to 
all  the  injury  of  a  poisonous  atmosphere." 

Miss  Austen  belonged  to  a  clerical  family,  and  in 
her  brother  Henry  found  an  example  of  those  who 


452  J^ne  Austen 

took  up  the  Church  as  a  profession  rather  than  as  a 
calling.  He  became  a  clergyman  late  in  life,  after 
failure  in  other  things.^  The  sister  was,  of  course, 
appreciative  of  the  humor  of  the  situation.  "  Uncle 
Henry,"  she  tells  a  nephew,  "  writes  very  superior 
sermons.  You  and  I  must  try  to  get  hold  of  one  or 
two,  and  put  them  in  our  novels:  it  would  be  a  fine 
help  to  a  volume;  and  we  could  make  our  heroines 
read  it  aloud  on  Sunday  evening,  just  as  well  as  Isa- 
bella Wardour  in  the  '  Antiquary '  is  made  to  read 
the  '  History  of  the  Hartz  Demon'  in  the  ruins  of  St. 
Ruth,  though  I  believe,  on  recollection,  Lovell  is  the 
reader."^  And  later,  referring  to  Henry's  first  ap- 
pearance in  a  clerical  capacity :  "  It  will  be  a  nervous 
hour  for  our  pew."  ^ 

It  was  a  day  when  a  clergyman  thought  it  wrong 
to  read  novels,  but  had  no  scruples  about  playing  at 
cards  for  money,  or  dancing  at  public  balls ;  a  day 
when  the  patron  of  a  living,  like  Sir  Thomas  Bertram, 
could  sell  its  presentation  to  any  Dr.  Grant  who  could 
pay  the  price  necessary  to  cancel  his  debts,  although 
by  such  an  action  he  is  not  only  bringing  into  his 
neighborhood  an  unworthy  priest,  but  is  doing  an 
injustice  to  his  son,  who  is  destined  for  that  living. 
One  can  see  from  these  novels  what  has  helped  to 
retard  the  progress  of  the  Anglican  communion. 
With  this  Dr.  Grant  before  her  —  this  Dr.  Grant  who 
would  doubtless  have  some  day  become  a  bishop  had 
he  not  died  of  apoplexy  brought  on  "  by  three  great 
institutionary  dinners  in  one  week"  —  we  have  some 
sympathy  with  Miss  Crawford  in  her  attempt  to  draw 

1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  184.     Brabourne,  vol.  i.,  pp.  94  seq. 

2  Austen-Leigh,  p.  309. 

3  /<>.,  p.  314. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  453 

Edmund  Bertram  away  from  a  lazy  profession.  The 
"  worldliness"  was  not  all  on  her  side;  an  ambitious 
woman  naturally  desires  her  husband  to  have  some 
ambitions  likewise. 

"  It  will,  indeed,  be  the  forerunner  of  other  interesting 
events ;  your  sister's  marriage,  and  your  taking  orders." 

«  Yes." 

"Don't  be  affronted,"  said  she,  laughing;  "  but  it  does 
put  me  in  mind  of  some  of  the  old  heathen  heroes,  who, 
after  performing  great  exploits  in  a  foreign  land,  offered 
sacrifices  to  the  gods  on  their  safe  return." 

And  not  one  of  these  clergymen  is  caricatured,  — 
not  even  Mr.  Collins.  If  we  think  this  worthy  is 
drawn  too  broadly,  we  have  only  to  remember  Mr. 
Clarke  with  his  "  august  house  of  Coburg."  I  sup- 
pose Edmund  Bertram  is  her  best  clergyman  from 
the  priestly  standpoint,  though,  as  I  have  said,  we 
can  think  of  none  of  them  as  clergymen,  but  only  as 
men.  Personally,  I  like  Tilney  the  best  because  of 
his  defiance  of  his  father  in  coming  to  Catherine: 
he  may  have  been  a  poor  priest,  but  he  was  a  man 
and  a  gentleman.  And  saving  Collins,  none  of  them 
were  hypocrites ;  they  were  all  too  frankly  secular  for 
that. 

XIV 

This  elegance  never  allows  her  to  parade  her  feel- 
ings. In  all  probability,  she  never  suffered  from  a 
love  affair.  A  mysterious  stranger  whom  she  is  said 
to  have  met  in  South  Devon  figures  in  some  of  the 
romances  written  about  her,  but  her  nephew  denies 
any  real  knowledge  of  the  episode.^  If  she  loved 
1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  199. 


454  J^ric  Austen 

she  hid  it  under  a  smiling  mask,  and  there  is  no  evi- 
dence whatever  of  such  an  attachment  in  her  letters. 
She  was  herself  an  "  elegant  female,"  loving  the 
niceties  of  a  polite  life,  and  it  would  have  been  a 
transcending  love  which  could  have  induced  her  to 
welcome  poverty  for  its  sake.  Apart  from  her  match- 
making proclivities,  she  was  more  like  her  own  Emma 
than  any  one  else;  and  no  Knightley  crossed  her 
path. 

"  I  do  so  wonder,  Miss  Woodhouse,  that  you  should  not 
be  married,  or  going  to  be  married  —  so  charming  as  you 
are." 

Emma  laughed  and  replied,  — 

"  My  being  charming,  Harriet,  is  not  quite  enough  to  in- 
duce me  to  marry;  I  must  find  other  people  charming  — 
one  other  person,  at  least.  And  I  am  not  only  not  going 
to  be  married  at  present,  but  have  very  little  intention  of 
ever  marrying  at  all." 

"  Ah,  so  you  say ;  but  I  cannot  believe  it." 

"  I  must  see  somebody  very  superior  to  any  one  I  have 
seen  yet,  to  be  tempted  :  Mr.  Elton,  you  know  (recollecting 
herself) ,  is  out  of  the  question ;  and  I  do  not  wish  to  see 
any  such  person.  I  would  rather  not  be  tempted.  If  I 
were  to  marry,  I  must  expect  to  repent  it." 

"  Dear  me  !  —  it  is  so  odd  to  hear  a  woman  talk  so  !  " 

"  I  have  none  of  the  usual  inducements  of  women  to 
marry.  Were  I  to  fall  in  love,  indeed,  it  would  be  a  dif- 
ferent thing ;  but  I  never  have  been  in  love  ;  it  is  not  my 
way  or  my  nature ;  and  I  do  not  think  I  ever  shall.  And 
without  love,  I  am  sure  I  should  be  a  fool  to  change  such 
a  situation  as  mine.  Fortune  I  do  not  want ;  employment 
I  do  not  want ;  consequence  I  do  not  want ;  I  believe  few 
married  women  are  half  as  much  mistress  of  their  husband's 
house  as  I   am   of  Hartfield;    and  never,  never  could  I 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  455 

expect  to  be  so  truly  beloved  and  important,  so  always 
first  and  always  right  in  any  man's  eyes  as  I  am  in  my 
father's." 


"  Never  mind,  Harriet,  I  shall  not  be  a  poor  old  maid  ; 
and  it  is  poverty  only  which  makes  celibacy  contemptible 
to  a  generous  public  !  A  single  woman  with  a  very  narrow 
income  must  be  a  ridiculous  disagreeable  old  maid  !  the 
proper  sport  of  boys  and  girls ;  but  a  single  woman  of  good 
fortune  is  always  respectable,  and  may  be  as  sensible  and 
pleasant  as  anybody  else !  And  the  distinction  is  not  quite 
so  much  against  the  candor  and  common-sense  of  the  world 
as  appears  at  first,  for  a  very  narrow  income  has  a  tendency 
to  contract  the  mind,  and  sour  the  temper.  Those  who 
can  barely  live,  and  who  live  perforce  in  a  very  small,  and 
generally,  very  inferior  society,  may  well  be  illiberal  and 
cross.  ...  If  I  know  myself,  Harriet,  mine  is  an  active,  busy 
mind,  with  a  great  many  independent  resources ;  and  I  do 
not  perceive  why  I  should  be  more  in  want  of  employment 
at  forty  or  fifty  than  at  one-and-twenty.  Woman's  usual 
occupations  of  eye,  and  hand,  and  mind  will  be  as  open  to 
me  then  as  they  are  now,  or  with  no  important  variation. 
If  I  draw  less,  I  shall  read  more ;  if  I  give  up  music,  I  shall 
take  to  carpetwork.  And  as  for  objects  of  interest,  objects 
for  the  affections,  which  is,  in  truth,  the  great  point  of  infe- 
riority, the  want  of  which  is  really  the  great  evil  to  be 
avoided  in  not  marrying,  I  shall  be  very  well  off,  with  all  the 
children  of  a  sister  I  love  so  much  to  care  about.  There 
will  be  enough  of  them,  in  all  probability,  to  supply  every 
sort  of  sensation  that  declining  life  can  need.  There  will 
be  enough  for  every  hope  and  every  fear ;  and  though  my 
attachment  to  none  can  equal  that  of  a  parent,  it  suits  my 
ideas  of  comfort  better  than  what  is  warmer  and  blinder. 
My  nephews  and  nieces,  —  I  shall  often  have  a  niece  with 
me." 


45^  Jane  Austen 

She  kept  her  own  counsel  about  the  things  nearest 
her  heart,  if  anything  was  nearer  to  it  than  the  affec- 
tion of  her  sister.  And  while  one  might  not  be  led  to 
expect  much  valuable  advice  on  the  subject  of  matri- 
mony from  one  who  refers  to  the  fact  of  the  mistress 
of  Lord  Craven  living  with  him  at  Ashdown  Park  as 
"  the  only  unpleasant  circumstance  about  him,"  —  not 
sufficiently  unpleasant,  however,  to  prevent  her  sister- 
in-law  from  meeting  him  and  finding  "  his  manners 
very  pleasing  indeed,"^ — still,  the  letter  she  writes 
her  niece  on  such  a  subject  is  all  that  the  most 
anxious  mother  could  desire,  notwithstanding  its 
amusing  admixture  of  the  "worldly"  view.  She 
refers  to  the  rarity  of  such  a  combination  of  virtues 
as  reside  in  the  young  man  in  question : 

"  There  are  such  beings  in  the  world,  perhaps  one  in  a 
thousand,  as  the  creature  you  and  I  should  think  perfection, 
whose  grace  and  spirit  are  united  to  worth,  where  the  man- 
ners are  equal  to  the  heart  and  understanding ;  but  such 
a  person  may  not  come  in  your  way,  or,  if  he  does,  he  may 
not  be  the  eldest  son  of  a  man  of  fortune,  the  near  relation 
of  your  particular  friend,  and  belonging  to  your  own 
country."  ^ 

Prudent  Jane !  But  then  she  concludes  by  urging  the 
niece  not  to  marry  unless  there  is  real  affection. 
Good  Jane ! 

It  was  reserved  for  the  great  glory  of  Charlotte 
Bronte  to  paint  the  full  picture  oi  \ki&  passion  of  love 
from  the  woman's  standpoint.  Jane  Austen  presents 
the  sentiment  merely.     It   was   still   a   day   when  a 

^  Brabourne,  vol.  i.,  p.  257.     Compare  this  with  a  similar  situa- 
tion in  '  Mansfield  Park.' 
2  lb.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  281. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  457 

woman's  love  was  regarded  as  the  natural  return  of 
gratitude  for  the  man's.  One  would  not  say  that  it 
was  impossible  to  portray  the  later  view  in  Miss 
Austen's  day,  and  yet  the  age  was  against  it.  Except 
in  '  Persuasion,'  we  are  charmed,  not  moved,  by  her 
love  scenes.  Still,  she  rose  superior  to  the  romantic 
ideals  of  her  day.  Henry  Tilney's  love  had  its  source 
in  a  pity  for  Catherine's  love  for  him.  "  It  is  a  new 
circumstance  in  romance,  I  acknowledge,  dreadfully 
derogatory  to  a  heroine's  dignity;  but  if  it  be  as  new 
in  common  life,  the  credit  of  a  wild  imagination  will 
at  least  be  all  my  own."  Jane  Austen  is  right  here, 
as  always.  Catherine  did  not  fling  herself  at  Henry, 
as  Miss  Bingley  did  at  Darcy,  for  she  would  not  have 
been  Miss  Austen's  heroine  thus :  it  is  the  difference 
between  sweet  frankness  and  vulgar  ambition.  Love 
must  spring  from  something;  why  not  from  that 
which  is  confessedly  akin  to  it? 

Her  heroes  and  her  heroines  always  marry,  and 
there  is  a  general  Tightness  in  all  the  sentiment. 
When  the  first  love  is  worthy,  it  is  rewarded,  and 
when  not,  not.  When  she  sets  out  to  draw  a  full- 
length  portrait  of  a  lover,  she  makes  a  success  of  it. 
What  could  be  more  hopeless  than  Darcy's  unpardon- 
able rudeness  to  Elizabeth  at  the  dance?  But  we  are 
forced  to  acknowledge,  step  by  step,  with  his  repent- 
ance, that  pride  of  race  must  make  liberal  demands 
on  Love  before  it  can  swallow  Mrs.  Bennet  as  a 
mother-in-law ;  and  in  the  completeness  of  this  won- 
derful woman's  art,  this  love  finally  becomes  supreme, 
—  the  "  pride"  of  a  Darcy  checked  and  humbled  by 
the  worth  of  a  Bennet,  and  the  "  prejudice  "  of  a  girl 
transformed  into  affection  for  a  character  which  the 
"  pride "  merely  cloaked  and  could  not  hide.     The 


458  Jane  Austen 

"  pride "  was  not  a  bar,  it  was  a  gate,  to  love,  and 
opened  to  it.     And  true  love  is  the  humor  of  it  all. 

She  does  not  dwell  on  the  unhappiness  of  ill-mated 
marriages,  although  opportunities  offer.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Bennet,  Sir  Thomas  and  Lady  Bertram,  are 
certainly  in  this  class.  The  conservative,  pleasant 
view  is  taken  that  these  things  did  not  matter  much, 
so  long  as  the  material  comfort  of  a  home  was  pro- 
vided. This  is  evidently  true  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Collins. 
But  in  each  of  these  cases  Miss  Austen  makes  it  very 
plain  that  the  wife  is  not  capable  of  unhappiness, 
and  is  therefore  an  object  of  intellectual  contempt 
rather  than  a  subject  for  sympathetic  pity.  Such 
marriages  are  part  of  the  comic  scheme.  She  would 
probably  have  said,  if  questioned  closely,  that  one's 
happiness  does  not  depend  entirely  on  any  one 
person,  notwithstanding  the  romantic  notion  to  the 
contrary.  The  idea  of  the  "  predestination  of  love  " 
was  not  predominant  then,  though  we  see  it  hinted 
at.  She  looks  out  on  the  waves  and  sees  them 
troubled,  but  believes  they  will  break  peacefully 
upon  the  shore  at  last ;  and  it  is  not  their  breaking  on 
the  shore  which  affects  her.  Her  cheerful  view  takes 
the  happiness  of  her  well-mated  couples  as  a  matter- 
of-course  not  demanding  any  analysis.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
John  Knightley,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gardiner,  Admiral  and 
Mrs.  Croft,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Weston  are  perfectly  happy, 
and  even  Mr.  John  Dashwood  has  a  wife  eminently 
suited  to  his  standards  of  bliss. 

But  in  'Persuasion'  we  strike  a  deeper  note.  It  is 
the  loveliest  of  her  stories.  She  felt  the  approach  of 
death  as  she  wrote  it,  and  she  was  moved  to  throw 
aside  her  reticence.  There,  if  nowhere  else,  she 
utters  the  true  woman's  appeal: 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  459 

We  certainly  do  not  forget  you  so  soon  as  you  forget  us. 
It  is  perhaps  our  fate  rather  than  our  merit.  We  cannot 
help  ourselves.  We  live  at  home,  quiet,  confined,  and  our 
feelings  prey  upon  us.  You  are  forced  on  exertion.  You 
have  always  a  profession,  pursuits,  business  of  some  sort  or 
other,  to  take  you  back  into  the  world  immediately,  and 
continual  occupation  and  change  soon  weaken  impressions. 

The  rnale  auditor  arguing  that  this  does  not  apply- 
to  the  case  in  point,  Anne  says  that  if  the  change  be 
not  from  outward  circumstances,  it  must  be  from 
within;  "it  must  be  nature,  man's  nature,  which 
has  done  the  business  for  Captain  Benwick."  Cap- 
tain Harville  will  not  allow  this  either,  believing 
the  reverse,  and  discovers  a  true  analogy  between  the 
bodily  and  mental  frame :  "  As  our  bodies  are  the 
strongest,  so  are  our  feelings."  Anne  grants  that 
they  may  be,  "  but  by  the  same  spirit  of  analogy. 
.  .  ours  are  the  most  tender,"  and  shows  that 
while  man  is  more  robust  than  woman  he  is  not 
longer  lived,  which  explains  her  point  of  view  of  the 
nature  of  their  attachments.  If  woman's  feelings  were 
to  be  added  to  the  difficulties,  privations,  and  dangers 
of  a  man's  life,  *'  it  would  be  too  hard,  indeed."  Har- 
ville then  quotes  the  songs  and  proverbs  against  her, 
which  leads  Miss  Elliot  to  retort  that  the  men  have 
the  advantage  over  her  sex  in  being  permitted  to  tell 
their  own  story.  "  I  believe  you  capable,"  she  con- 
cludes, 

of  everything  great  and  good  in  your  married  lives.  I  be- 
lieve you  equal  to  every  important  exertion,  and  to  every 
domestic  forbearance  so  long  as  —  if  I  may  be  allowed  the 
expression  —  so  long  as  you  have  an  object.  I  mean  while 
the  woman  you  love  lives  and  lives  for  you.     All  the  privi- 


460  Jane  Austen 

lege  I  claim  for  my  own  sex  (it  is  not  a  very  enviable  one, 
—  you  need  not  covet  it)  is  that  of  loving  longest  when  ex- 
istence or  when  hope  is  gone. 

Yet  Miss  Austen  is  a  just  woman,  for  she  makes 
Frederick,  who  has  been  overhearing  this,  immedi- 
ately write  to  Anne,  even  as  she  is  speaking,  declar- 
ing to  her  that  his  own  long  years  of  waiting  prove 
one  exception  to  her  rule,  and  the  one  exception  in 
all  the  world  she  is  most  anxious  to  acknowledge. 

Originally,  it  will  be  remembered,  this  scene  was 
differently  arranged,  and  the  chapter  containing  this 
most  beautiful  defence  of  woman's  love  is  a  substitute 
for  the  first  draught.  This  is  more  than  an  indication 
of  the  great  care  she  gave  to  all  her  compositions ;  it 
was  an  inspiration  at  the  gate  of  the  tomb. 


XV 

Her  heroines  are  joys  forever.  Each  has  her  dis- 
tinctive excellence,  each  makes  her  individual  appeal. 
One  cannot  separate  them  into  groups,  although 
there  are  teasing  points  of  similarity,  —  another  in- 
dication of  her  equal  mastery  of  particular  and 
general. 

The  girl  Jane  Austen  reveals  in  her  letters  possi- 
bilities of  romantic  inclination  which  her  critical 
faculties  held  in  reserve.  Her  Emma  corrects  her 
Catherine.  Her  earlier  heroine  is  the  personification 
of  simple-mindedness.  She  is  simple,  but  not  silly. 
A  more  complex  nature  would  have  resented  the 
superior  wit  of  Tilney  at  the  expense  of  her  ignorance, 
and  would  have  retorted  in  kind.  But  Catherine  is 
clear-sighted  enough  to  see  that  there  is  nothing  ill- 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  461 

tempered  in  his  persiflage,  and  is  humble  enough  to 
know  that  she  is  ignorant;  so  she  accepts  the  first  in 
the  spirit  in  which  it  is  offered,  and  sets  about  to 
remedy  the  second.  With  all  her  romanticism,  she 
is  the  reverse  of  a  fool.  She  sees  through  the  designs 
of  Isabelle  Thorpe  and  refuses  to  be  taken  in  by  them. 
Thackeray's  women  are  not  so  wise. 

Like  Catherine,  Fanny  Price,  notwithstanding  her 
gentle,  yielding  nature,  can  be  firm  on  occasion.  She 
is  faithful  at  once  to  the  dictates  of  heart  and  head, 
which  is  not  such  a  common  virtue.  Sir  Thomas 
recognizes  this  strength  and  fears  it,  and  Miss  Austen 
cunningly  aims  a  shaft  at  "  perfidious  man"  in  noting 
the  fact: 

He  could  not  help  fearing  that  if  such  very  long  allowances 
of  time  and  habit  were  necessary  for  her,  she  might  not 
have  persuaded  herself  into  receiving  his  addresses  properly, 
before  the  young  man's  inclinations  for  paying  them  were 
over. 

She  represents  the  clinging-vine  ideal  perhaps 
more  than  the  other  heroines,  but  it  clings  in  the 
way  every  true-hearted  man  would  desire.  She  is 
sweet,  yet  strong ;  as  delicate  as  a  flower  under  the 
snow,  but  as  steady  as  truth  itself.  She  should  have 
been  named  Violet. 

And  Anne  Elliot  is  Viola!  There  we  have  the 
true  "  sensibility,"  as  we  also  have  it  in  Elinor  Dash- 
wood, —  the  sensibility  suffering  in  silence,  governed 
by  the  "  sense  "  which  is  too  proud  and  too  gentle  to 
give  it  voice.  "She  pined  in  thought,"  even  while 
•'smiling  at  grief;"  and  every  reader  exclaims, 
"Was   not  this    love,   indeed?"     With    Emma   the 


462  J^rie  Austen 

ladyhood  is  at  times  predominant  over  the  woman- 
hood: the  pensive  burden  of  Anne  Elliot's  thought 
is  a  note  of  sad  womanhood,  into  which  is  steeped 
the  brilliant  lady  quality  Miss  Austen  gives  to  all  her 
heroines.  Elizabeth  Bennet's  voice  laughs  silvery 
down  the  ages ;  Anne  Elliot's  rings  a  mellow  golden 
cadence.  She  is  inwardly  pensive,  not  outwardly 
melancholy.  Her  love  lays  a  care  upon  her,  but  it 
makes  her  hide  it  that  she  may  care  for  others  the 
more.  And  with  what  deft  art  is  contrasted  her  real 
melancholy  with  the  sentimentality,  her  shrinking 
"  sense  "  with  the  unshrinking  "  sensibility,"  of  Captain 
Benwick ! 


For  though  shy,  he  did  not  seem  reserved ;  it  had 
rather  the  appearance  of  feelings  glad  to  burst  their  usual 
restraints ;  and  having  talked  of  poetry,  the  richness  of  the 
present  age,  and  gone  through  a  brief  comparison  of  opin- 
ions as  to  the  first-rate  poets,  trying  to  ascertain  whether 
'  Marmion '  or  '  The  Lady  of  the  Lake '  were  to  be  preferred, 
and  how  ranked  the  *  Giaour '  and  *  The  Bride  of  Abydos,' 
and  moreover,  how  the  '  Giaour '  was  to  be  pronounced,  he 
showed  himself  so  intimately  acquainted  with  all  the  ten- 
derest  songs  of  the  one  poet,  and  the  impassioned  descrip- 
tions of  hopeless  agony  of  the  other ;  he  repeated  with  such 
tremulous  feeling  the  various  lines  which  imaged  a  broken 
heart  or  a  mind  destroyed  by  wretchedness,  and  looked  so 
entirely  as  if  he  meant  to  be  understood,  that  she  ventured 
to  hope  he  did  not  always  read  only  poetry;  and  to  say 
that  she  thought  it  was  the  misfortune  of  poetry  to  be  seldom 
safely  enjoyed  by  those  who  enjoyed  it  completely ;  and 
that  the  strong  feelings  which  alone  could  estimate  it  truly 
were  the  very  feelings  which  ought  to  taste  it  but 
sparingly. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  463 

The  woman  who  does  not  love  Anne  Elliot   is   not 
a  good  woman.^ 

We  see  that  the  gentleness  of  a  girl  like  this  does 
not  stand  in  the  way  of  her  wisdom.  The  heroines 
of  Jane  Austen  are  clear-sighted  like  herself;  they 
not  only  choose  the  best  ends,  but  also  the  best 
means  for  accomplishing  them.  They  are  witty,  but 
refined;  satirical  rather  than  sarcastic;  never  biting; 
not  keen  in  the  pursuit  of  prey ;  not  cultivating  a  high 
pitch,  but  manifesting  a  high  cultivation  in  a  natural 
pitch.  There  is  about  none  of  her  women  the  sharp 
strain  we  detect  in  the  characterizations  of  certain 
"lady  novelists "  whom  we  could  name;  nothing  — 
unless  we  happen  to  be  fools  ourselves  —  to  cause  us 
uneasiness  in  their  society.  Emma  is  the  only  occa- 
sional exception,  and  that  interesting  young  woman 
is  made  to  suffer  for  the  excess.^ 


1  In  the  famous  article  of  Archbishop  Whately  already  referred  to 
more  than  once,  the  assertion  is  made  that  the  situation  in  '  Persua- 
sion '  is  so  true  that  it  must  have  been  the  result  of  a  personal  experi- 
ence. But  since  the  Archbishop's  day,  more  particularly  than  before 
it,  has  the  artist  been  allowed  to  stand  apart  from  the  man ;  and  if 
Miss  Moira  O'Neill,  who  perhaps  may  be  called  the  chief  of  living 
Irish  singers,  can,  in  '  Denny's  Daughter,'  feel  instinctively  a  man's 
pain  at  a  woman's  refusal,  cannot  Miss  Austen  be  permitted  this 
artist's  freedom,  much  more  easily  imagined  in  her  case  because 
applied  to  her  own  sex  ? 

2  The  only  error  we  can  charge  against  Miss  Austen's  art  in  this 
field  lies  in  this  character.  It  has  always  struck  me  as  a  queer  mis- 
take to  have  allowed  Emma  to  devise  an  attachment  between  Harriet 
Smith  and  a  young  man  of  such  aristocratic  connections  as  Frank 
Churchill.  The  marriage  with  Elton  would  have  been  well  enough ; 
but  fancy  the  dismay  at  Enscombe  over  the  announcement  of  an 
engagement  between  those  two  !  There  ought  to  have  been  another 
man  in  the  story  to  have  given  Emma's  second  mistake  freer  scope. 
Miss  Austen  might  have  retorted,  if  charged  with  the  "slip,"  that  a 
zeal  for  matchmaking  makes  even  the  wisest  fools,  and  that  this  very 
absurdity  was  purposely  selected  to  emphasize  the  fact.    Still,  a 


464  Jaiie  Austen 

We  have  said  that  Emma  is  more  like  her  creator 
than  the  other  characters :  she  reflects  the  "  vvorldli- 
ness  "  more  than  the  rest.  Yet  there  is  the  redeeming 
human  quality  in  both.  "  Poor  Mrs.  Stent !  "  writes 
Miss  Austen  to  her  sister.  "  It  has  been  her  lot  to 
be  always  in  the  way ;  but  we  must  be  merciful,  for 
perhaps  in  time  we  may  come  to  be  Mrs.  Stents 
ourselves,  unequal  to  anything,  and  unwelcome  to 
everybody."  ^  Here  we  see  Miss  Bates  in  posse,  and 
the  "  impatient  note  "  of  a  bright  spirit  bored  at  dul- 
ness;  but  with  all  Emma's  mimicry.  Miss  Austen 
subdues  it  to  a  kind  level,  punishing  her  heroine 
in  the  one  instance  where  it  offends  the  poor  lady  by 
visiting  it  with  Mr.  Knightley's  rebuke.  Our  author 
was  notably  independent,  considering  her  age,  in  the 
expression  of  her  views,  and  she  is  never  restrained  by 
any  false  standard  of  "  female  modesty."  Referring 
to  a  certain  music  master,  she  writes :  "  I  have  not 
Fanny's  fondness  for  masters,  and  Mr.  M.  does  not 
give  me  any  longing  after  them.  The  truth  is,  I 
think  that  they  are  all,  at  least  music-masters,  made 
of  too  much  consequence,  and  allowed  to  take  too 
many  liberties  with  their  scholars'  time."  ^  Yet  nothing 
could  have  been  more  shocking  to  Miss  Austen  than 
the  kind  of  independence  advocated  for  women  in 
these  latter  days.  She  had  the  old-fashioned  belief, 
which  is  still  shared  by  the  majority  of  her  sisters, 
that  no  matter  how  superior  the  woman  is  to  the 
man  in  many  things,  the  fit  relationship  of  the  sexes 
lies  in  the  recognition  of  man's  general  superiority  in 

young  woman  of  Emma's  elegant  perceptions,  one  would  say,  would 
hardly  be  led  astray  in  this  fashion. 

1  Austen-Leigh,  p.  245. 

2  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  259. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  465 

judgment  and  strength,  which  makes  him  the  master, 
although,  of  course,  in  the  spirit  of  Christian  courtesy 
and  forbearance.  So  her  wittiest  and  most  indepen- 
dent heroine  is  made  "  inferior "  to  the  hero,  and 
Emma  sweetly  and  cheerfully  acknowledges  the  jus- 
tice of  Knightley's  rebukes.  She  is  not  a  snob, 
because  she  is  too  intrinsically  genteel  to  ape  gentility ; 
but  her  faults  lie  towards  superciliousness,  which  is 
corrected  in  the  most  natural  way  by  her  real  good- 
nature and  by  the  love  with  which  she  reads  her 
mentor's  mind.  She  is  the  most  distinguished  of 
Miss  Austen's  young  ladies.  While  in  point  of 
years  she  is  not  much  older  than  Elizabeth  Bennet, 
she  reflects  her  creator's  more  mature  thought.  And 
in  the  last  analysis  there  is  something  very  human 
about  her. 

Half-way  between  Anne  Elliot  and  Emma  stands 
Elinor  Dashwood,  and  this  position  indicates  the 
variety  which  Miss  Austen  gives  to  her  characters. 
Macaulay  delighted  to  point  out  the  differences  be- 
tween her  clergymen,  notwithstanding  their  points  of 
similarity ;  this  is  much  more  noticeable  in  her  hero- 
ines. Elinor,  like  Anne,  suffers  from  an  unhappily 
retarded  success  in  love.  She  carries  herself  with 
the  same  dignity,  and  hides  her  grief  with  an  equal 
unselfishness.  But  there  is  a  more  sharply  defined 
aplomb  about  her.  The  circumstances  of  her  case 
make  it  necessary  for  her  to  show  her  hand  more 
frequently,  and  she  does  it  with  the  fine  flavor  of  wit ; 
at  times  we  forget  the  pathos  of  the  situation  in  the 
gallantry  with  which  it  is  maintained. 

But  what  shall  we  say  of  Elizabeth  Bennet?  She  is, 
all  in  all,  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  heroines  in  fic- 
tion, —  one  of  the  first  half-dozen  we  would  pick  out 

30 


466  Jane  Austen 

above  all  the  rest  as  the  most  charming.  We  admire 
Emma  in  spite  of  her  faults ;  we  love  Elizabeth  without 
thinking  of  faults  at  all.  We  could  see,  if  we  wanted 
to,  the  lurking  possibilities  of  faults  in  her  character, 
but  they  do  not  come  to  the  surface ;  and  to  so 
fashion  a  personality  is  very  rare  art.  She  is  not 
perhaps  without  actual  imperfections,  but  the  imper- 
fections are  not  actionable,  and  she  is  not  "  faultless  " 
like  Thackeray's  women.  We  admire  Emma  too  much 
to  love  her;  our  admiration  for  Elizabeth  is  lost  in 
our  love.  The  "sweet  careless  music"  of  Walter 
Scott  gives  no  strain  like  the  melody  which  the  bare 
mention  of  Elizabeth  Bennet's  name  awakens  in  the 
memory.  It  was  characteristic  of  that  master's  fine 
chivalry  to  make  even  Di  Vernon,  his  queen  of  women, 
a  little  too  perfect  for  our  limited  minds  to  grasp. 
We  apprehend  that  sort  of  a  heroine ;  we  comprehend 
Elizabeth  Bennet.  She  was  Miss  Austen's  own  favor- 
ite, by  which  token  she  should  be  ours  also.  With 
characteristic  playful  fondness,  she  pretended  to  search 
for  her  characters  in  real  life.  She  mentions  in  one  of 
her  letters  seeing  a  portrait  of  Mrs.  Bingley  at  the 
exhibition  in  Spring  Gardens,  "  but  there  was  no  Mrs. 
Darcy.  [There  was  no  chance  of  that  in  any  collec- 
tion of  Sir  Joshuas.]  Mrs.  Bingley  is  exactly  her- 
self, —  size,  shaped  face,  features,  and  sweetness. 
She  is  dressed  in  a  white  gown,  with  green  ornaments, 
which  convinces  me  of  what  I  had  always  supposed, 
that  green  was  a  favorite  color  with  her.  I  dare  say 
Mrs.  Darcy  will  be  in  yellow."^  After  a  vi.sit  to  other 
galleries,  she  confesses  her  disappointment  at  not 
finding  anything  like  Mrs.  Darcy  there.  "  I  can  only 
imagine  that  Mr.  Darcy  prizes  any  picture  of  her  too 
1  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  139,  140. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  467 

much  to  like  to  see  it  exposed  to  the  public  eye.  I  can 
imagine  he  would  have  that  sort  of  feeUng,  that  mix- 
ture of  love  and  pride  and  delicacy."  ^ 

Even  that  belittler  of  woman's  art,  Mr,  Saintsbury, 
says  in  his  Preface  to  *  Pride  and  Prejudice ' : 

In  the  novels  of  the  last  one  hundred  years,  there  are 
vast  numbers  of  young  ladies  with  whom  it  might  be  a 
pleasure  to  fall  in  love ;  there  are  at  least  five  with  whom, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  no  man  of  taste  and  spirit  can  help  doing 
so.  Their  names  are,  in  chronological  order,  Elizabeth 
Bennet,  Diana  Vernon,  Argemone  Lavington,  Beatrix  Es- 
mond, and  Barbara  Grant. 

And  while  confessing  that  he  should  have  been  most 
in  love  with  Beatrix  and  Argemone,  none  of  the 
others,  he  maintains,  could  come  into  competition  with 
Elizabeth  as  a  wife  for  daily  companionship.  As  for 
me,  when  I  first  read  these  novels,  I  wanted  to  marry 
each  of  the  heroines  as  she  was  presented,  —  except 
Emma,  of  whom  I  am  still  a  little  afraid ;  I  should 
feel  nervous  about  asking  my  bachelor  friends  home 
to  dinner,  for  fear  that  she  would  want  to  marry 
them  ofif  to  Harriet  Smith. 

Even  the  subordinate  women  of  her  stories  are  dis- 
tinguished. It  is  a  mistake  to  rank  Marianne  Dash- 
wood  with  the  hopelessly  silly  group  consisting  of 
Isabelle  Thorpe  and  the  Steeles.  Her  type  is  differ- 
ent from  all  the  others.  She  is  not  selfishly  vain,  and 
is  not  spoiled  by  the  world.  She  has  no  trace  of  the 
vulgarity  of  the  worst  of  her  class,  and  she  is  so  truth- 
ful that  she  cannot  even  fib  in  "  society,"  or  appear  to 
be  other  than  she  is.  Eleanor  Tilney  is  what  the 
playwrights  would  call  the  second  leading  lady  of  the 
1  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  143. 


468  Jane  Austen 

book;  yet  of  her  the  Earl  of  Iddesleigh  can  write: 
"  Surely  the  whole  House  of  Lords  envied  the  un- 
named viscount  who  became  her  husband."^ 


XVI 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  with  critical  nicety  as  to  the 
comparative  merits  of  such  novels  as  these;  for  as 
with  persons,  so  with  fiction,  one  may  have  a  per- 
sonal favorite,  although  aware  of  the  superiority  of 
another.  In  the  matter  of  plot  there  is  not  much 
choice.  Whatever  surprises  she  has  in  store  for  us 
are  kept  well  in  hand.  No  one  can  foresee  how 
Edward  Ferrars  is  to  be  released  from  Lucy  Steele. 
Half-way  through  '  Persuasion  *  we  are  uncertain 
whether  Elliot,  Benwick,  or  Wentworth  is  to  marry 
Anne,  and  we  are  well  on  in  *  Emma '  before  we  can 
decide  as  to  whether  Mrs.  Weston's  surmise  is  cor- 
rect that  Knightley  is  in  love  with  Jane  Fairfax,  or 
whether  Churchill  is  not  himself,  or  again,  whether 
Knightley  is  in  love  with  Emma.  Yet  the  plots  are 
not  sensationally  developed.  The  earlier  pages  nat- 
urally lead  up  to  the  swiftness  of  interest  in  the  con- 
cluding chapters;  and  as  with  all  true  realists,  the 
character-drawing  and  the  charm  of  narration  occupy 
us  more  than  the  mere  story.  I  would  say  that 
'Pride  and  Prejudice'  is  the  most  brilliant  of  the 
fictions,  '  Emma'  the  most  elegant,  *  Mansfield  Park' 
the  most  carefully  detailed,  '  Persuasion '  the  most 
beautiful.  But  it  is  foolish  to  dwell  on  a  comparison 
where  all  are  brilliant,  all  elegant,  all  worked  out 
most  carefully,  and  all  beautiful.     We  notice,  indeed, 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  May,  1900. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  469 

a  maturity  in  the  later  novels  which  gives  them  a 
more  chiselled  grace ;  Lady  Bertram  is  done  with 
less  exuberance  than  Mrs.  Bennet;  and  although  Miss 
Austen  let  herself  go  on  Miss  Bates  — 

"  How  would  he  bear  to  have  Miss  Bates  belonging  to 
him  ?  To  have  her  haunting  the  Abbey,  and  thanking  him 
all  day  long  for  his  great  kindness  in  marrying  Jane  ?  '  So 
very  kind  and  obliging  !  But  he  always  had  been  such  a 
very  kind  neighbor  ! '  And  then  fly  off,  through  half  a  sen- 
tence, to  her  mother's  old  petticoat.  *  Not  that  it  was  such 
a  very  old  petticoat  either,  —  for  still  it  would  last  a  great 
while,  —  and  indeed,  she  must  thankfully  say  that  their 
petticoats  were  all  very  strong  '  "  — 

yet  she  suffers  herself  to  be  rebuked  for  her  wit 
when  it  becomes  unkind.  "  The  hand  which  drew 
Miss  Bates,"  says  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  "  though  it 
could  not  have  drawn  Lady  Macbeth,  could  have 
drawn  Dame  Quickly  and  the  Nurse  in  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet.' "  1 

But  restraint  was  always  evident  in  Miss  Austen's 
work,  and  good  taste  always  controlled  it.  We  see  it 
in  her  avoidance  of  the  highfalutin'  names  of  the 
popular  heroines  of  her  day.  Instead  of  Honoria  we 
have  Elinor;  instead  of  Indiana,  Fanny;  instead  of 
Eugenia,  Catherine ;  instead  of  Camilla,  Elizabeth ; 
instead  of  Evelina,  Anne.  We  see  it  in  the  faithful 
realism  which  did  not  permit  her  to  extend  her  fancy 
beyond  the  limits  of  her  experience.  It  has  been 
pointed  out  that  she  has  drawn  no  scene  in  which 
men  alone  are  the  actors ;  she  could  not  have  imag- 
ined the  Rainbow   Tavern  chapter  in  '  Silas  Marner,' 

1  '  Life  of  Jane  Austen,'  by  Goldwin  Smith.  London :  Walter 
Scott,  1890,  p.  139. 


470  Jaiie  Austen 

—  an  evidence  that  she  is  not  Shaksperean  in 
the  sense  that  George  Eliot  is.  Her  men  are  not 
done  with  so  sure  a  hand  as  her  women.  An  in- 
dication of  Richardson's  effeminacy  is  that  Clarissa 
is  truer  to  life  than  Lovelace  :  the  same  superiority 
with  Miss  Austen  simply  proves  her  femininity. 
Just  what  view  she  would  have  taken  of  the  present 
standards  of  the  higher  education  of  women,  it  is 
impossible  to  say ;  her  conservative  instincts  led  her 
to  cover  any  ambitions  of  her  time  in  that  direction 
with  ridicule  : 

Mrs.  Goddard  was  the  mistress  of  a  school,  —  not  of  a 
seminary,  or  an  establishment,  or  anything  which  professed, 
in  long  sentences  of  refined  nonsense,  to  combine  liberal 
acquirements  with  elegant  morality,  upon  new  principles 
and  new  systems,  —  and  where  young  ladies  for  enormous 
pay  might  be  screwed  out  of  health  and  into  vanity,  —  but 
a  real,  honest,  old-fashioned  boarding-school,  where  a 
reasonable  quantity  of  accomplishments  were  sold  at  a  rea- 
sonable price,  and  where  girls  might  be  sent  to  be  out  of 
the  way,  and  scramble  themselves  into  a  little  education 
without  any  danger  of  coming  back  prodigies. 

She  did  her  best,  by  the  use  of  a  genuine  drama, 
to  remove  theatricality  from  English  fiction.  She  sub- 
stituted art  for  artifice.  She  pleads  not  guilty  to  the 
favorite  fatuity  of  creating  an  improbability  and  then 
taking  refuge  in  piety  by  calling  the  escape  "  provi- 
dential ; "  reminding  one  of  the  Sunday-school  teacher's 
answer  to  the  question  why  the  people  mentioned  in 
the  Bible  as  walking  on  the  roofs  of  houses  did  not 
fall  off,  — "  Because  all  things  are  possible  with  God." 
She  was  not  a  learned  woman,  and,  as  we  have  seen, 
humorously  confessed  her  profound  ignorance  of  phi- 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  471 

losophy.  She  was  well  acquainted  with  many  forms 
of  "  polite  literature,"  however.  It  was  an  age  when, 
as  Gibbon  complained,  there  were  no  public  libraries 
suitable  for  a  scholar's  use,  although  the  circulating 
library  was  flourishing  like  the  green  bay  tree.  She 
amusingly  criticises  Egerton's  *  Fitz-Albini,'  and 
refers  to  Boswell's  *  Tour  to  the  Hebrides '  and  his 
'Johnson  ;  '  "  and,  as  some  money  will  yet  remain  in 
Burdon's  hands,  it  is  to  be  laid  out  in  the  purchase 
of  Cowper's  works.  This  would  please  Mr.  Clarke, 
could  he  know  it."  ^  She  is  quite  determined  not  to 
be  pleased  with  Mrs,  West's  '  Alicia  DeLacy,'  and 
thinks  she  can  be  stout  against  anything  written  by 
that  lady.2  Of  Miss  S.  S.  Burney's  '  Alphonsine,'  she 
says:  "'Alphonsine'  will  not  do.  We  were  disgusted 
in  twenty  pages,  as,  independent  of  a  bad  translation, 
it  has  indelicacies  which  disgrace  a  pen  hitherto  so 
pure ;  and  we  changed  it  for  the  *  Female  Quixote,' 
which  now  makes  our  evening  amusement;  to  me  a 
very  high  one,  as  I  find  the  work  quite  equal  to 
what  I  remembered  it."  ^  She  is  not  much  pleased 
with  '  Marmion,'  which  she  reads  aloud,  evenings.* 
Espriella's  '  Letters  '  are  "  horribly  anti-English."  ^ 
In  regard  to  Mrs.  Hawkins  she  comments,  "  As  to 
love,  her  heroines  have  very  comical  feelings."  * 
Miss  Owenson's  '  Ida  of  Athens '  she  acknowledges 
must  be  very  clever,  "  because  it  was  written,  as  the 

1  Brabourne,  vol.  i.,  pp.  169,  170. 

2  lb.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  318. 

8  lb.,  vol.  i.,  p.  316.  She  approves  of  Mrs.  Lenox  probably  because 
of  points  of  similarity  between  the  '  Quixote '  and  the  attitude  of  her- 
self in  '  Northanger  Abbey.' 

4  lb.,  vol.  i.,  p.  356. 

8  lb.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  8. 

•  Austen-Leigh,  p.  286. 


472  J^ii^  Austen 

authoress  says,  in  three  months  ...  If  the  warmth 
of  her  language  could  affect  the  body  it  might  be 
worth  reading  in  this  weather."  ^  She  is  "  very  fond 
of  Sherlock's  sermons,"  preferring  them  "  to  almost 
any,"^  She  speaks  of  Goldsmith,  Hume,  and  Robert- 
son as  her  old  guides  in  history,  and  to  Miss  Lloyd 
she  writes:  "  I  am  reading  '  Henry's  History  of  Eng- 
land,' which  I  will  repeat  to  you  in  any  manner  you 
may  prefer,  —  either  in  a  loose,  desultory,  uncon- 
nected stream,  or  dividing  my  recital  as  the  historian 
divides  it  himself,  into  seven  parts  ...  so  that  for 
every  evening  in  the  week  there  will  be  a  different 
subject."^  There  are  references  to  most  of  the  living 
poets  in  either  the  letters  or  the  novels ;  and  occa- 
sionally we  are  surprised  by  her  quoting  some  more 
recondite  author,  as  Mary  Crawford's  citation  of  Isaak 
Hawkins  Browne. 

She  knew  enough  to  be  a  good  critic,  her  exquisite 
taste  and  her  never-failing  humor  always  standing  her 
in  good  stead.  How  cheerful  her  laugh  at  her  niece's 
manuscript ! 

"  His  having  been  in  love  with  the  aunt  gives  Cecilia  an 
additional  interest  in  him.  I  like  the  idea — a  very  proper 
compliment  to  an  aunt !  I  rather  imagine,  indeed,  that 
nieces  are  seldom  chosen  but  out  of  compliment  to  some 
aunt  or  another.  I  daresay  Ben  was  in  love  with  me  once, 
and  would  never  have  thought  of  you  if  he  had  not  supposed 
me  dead  of  scarlet  fever."  ^ 

"  Devereux  Forester 's  being  ruined  by  his  vanity," 
she  writes  this  same  young  relative,  concerning  an- 

1  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  62.  ^  Ih. 

•  Austen-Leigh,  p.  235. 

*  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  323. 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  473 

other  of  her  characters,  "  is  extremely  good,  but  I 
wish  you  would  not  let  him  plunge  into  a  *  vortex  of 
dissipation.'  I  do  not  object  to  the  thing,  but  I  cannot 
bear  the  expression ;  it  is  such  thorough  novel  slang, 
and  so  old  that  I  dare  say  Adam  met  with  it  in  the 
first  novel  he  opened."  ^  She  guessed  that  'Waverley ' 
was  written  by  Scott  before  the  secret  was  out: 
"Walter  Scott  has  no  business  to  write  novels,  espe- 
cially good  ones.  It  is  not  fair.  He  has  fame  and 
profit  enough  as  a  poet,  and  ought  not  to  be 
taking  the  bread  out  of  other  people's  mouths."^  So 
when  a  woman  like  Jane  Austen  deliberately  cancels 
a  *  Lady  Susan,'  and  relegates  a  family  of  '  Watsons ' 
to  obscurity,  we  confess  to  feeling  more  curiosity 
about  it  than  interest  in  it ;  for  we  have  enough  faith 
in  the  critical  faculty  of  one  who  can,  in  the  crucial 
pain  of  her  last  hours,  cancel  a  chapter  for  the  pur- 
pose of  substituting  a  better  one,  to  abide  by  that 
faculty  in  leaving  cancelled,  in  the  time  of  her  health, 
two  entire  novels. 

But  this  elegance  of  restraint  is  finest  when  it 
smilingly  rebukes  an  unnecessary  desire  for  details 
which  she  considered  indelicate  to  enumerate.  When 
Knightley  proposes,  "What  did  she  say?"  asks 
Miss  Austen  of  Emma,  knowing  that  that  is  just 
what  her  sentimental  audience  wishes  to  learn.  "Just 
what  she  ought,  of  course.  A  lady  always  does." 
She   knows    that   the   genuine   lovers   of    Elizabeth 

1  Brabourne,  vol.  ii.,  p.  317. 

2  Austen-Leigh,  p.  257.  This  letter  is  quoted  more  fully  by  Lord 
Brabourne,  who  gives  the  date  of  it,  Sept.  28,  1814,  about  two  months 
after  the  publication  of  the  novel.  This  may,  of  course,  merely  indi- 
cate, that  the  authorship  was  more  generally  known  than  has  been 
supposed. 


474  J^^^  Austen 

Bennet  are  absolute  on  the  unalloyed  sincerity  of 
that  young  lady's  regard  for  Darcy,  —  that  this  re- 
gard is  not  in  the  slightest  degree  increased  by  the 
prospective  delights  of  Pemberley.  She  also  knows, 
however,  that  many  readers  will  suspect  such  an  ex- 
planation for  the  esteem ;  so,  in  answer  to  her  sister's 
inquiries  as  to  how  long  she  had  loved  Mr.  Darcy, 
Elizabeth  is  made  to  reply :  "  I  believe  I  must  date  it 
from  my  first  seeing  his  beautiful  grounds  at  Pember- 
ley." Perhaps  very  young  readers  do  not  much 
admire  Miss  Austen. 


XVII 

The  appreciation  of  Miss  Austen  has  come  to  be 
one  of  the  marks  of  literary  taste.  She  is  appreci- 
ated even  where  the  preference  is  for  other  styles  of 
workmanship.  More  and  more  is  our  age  less  easily 
amused,  requiring  greater  intricacy  and  subtler  tangles 
than  before,  just  as  a  latter-day  audience  demands  more 
and  more  hazardous  performances  on  the  trapeze  to 
gratify  its  pampered  taste  for  daring  skill,  which  would 
not  put  up  with  the  simpler  exploits  which  amazed 
our  fathers.  Notwithstanding  this,  the  simplicity  of 
Miss  Austen's  art  satisfies  the  jaded  sense,  —  satisfies 
it,  indeed,  because  it  is  jaded  with  these  new  wines 
with  which  it  has  been  experimenting,  and  glad  to 
taste  again  the  grateful  product  of  a  sounder  vintage. 
"  I  find  myself  every  now  and  then,"  says  fine  old 
Walter  Scott,  "  with  one  of  her  novels  in  my  hands." 
For  the  Homeric  quality  of  laughter  inextinguishable 
is  hers :  we  can  never  think  of  her  without  thinking 
of  Mr.  Collins,  who  had  the  kind  intention  of  chris- 


Her  Wonderful  Charm  475 

tening,  marrying,  and  burying  his  parishioners  when- 
ever it  did  not  conflict  with  his  duties  to  Lady 
Catherine  de  Bourgh;  and  of  Mr.  VVoodhouse  lov- 
ing to  see  the  cloth  laid,  but  convinced  that  every- 
thing on  it  was  unwholesome;  and  of  Mrs.  Norris 
going  home  "  with  all  the  supernumerary  jellies." 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  overestimate  her  impor- 
tance. Her  star  rose  at  the  close  of  a  dull  night  in  a 
gray  morning  presaging  a  clear  day.  The  haunting 
delicacy  of  her  idea  is  of  the  virginal  beauty  of  dawn. 
Out  of  its  sloth  and  degradation,  fiction,  at  her  bid- 
ding, put  on  new  life, — 

.  .  .  youth  irrepressibly  fair 
wakes  like  a  wondering  rose. 

Her  skill  was  all-complete,  the  bright  elegance  of 
her  charm  all-perfect.  She  is  the  Meissonier  of  liter- 
ary art,  and  the  fair  mistress  of  its  subtlest  intricacies. 
And  her  life,  moving  along  the  high  level  tracks  of 
serene  good  sense,  and  glittering  with  the  distinction 
of  wit,  was  in  finest  accord  with  the  best  creations  of 
her  fancy.  "  I  can  indeed  bear  witness,"  says  her 
nephew,  "  that  there  was  scarcely  a  charm  in  her 
most  delightful  characters  that  was  not  a  true  reflec- 
tion of  her  own  sweet  temper  and  loving  heart." 

She  was  buried  in  the  grand  minster  under  whose 
gracious  shade  she  came  to  rest  in  the  sweet  eventide 
which  fell  so  swiftly  on  her  noon.  She  lies  almost 
opposite  the  tomb  of  William  of  Wykeham,  and  round 
about  her  is  the  crumbling  dust  of  mighty  saints  and 
great  witnesses  for  truth.  And  not  unworthily  sleeps 
she  there  among  the  sculptured  dead. 


] 


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UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  F 


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